Are the Nobel prizes sexist? If they are, then perhaps some are more sexist than others. The prize for literature has been awarded to 14 women and 95 men. The peace prize has gone to 16 women and 81 men. Of the others, female laureates number 12 in medicine/physiology, four in chemistry, two in physics, and just one in economics.
Taken as a whole, just 5 per cent of the 911 winners have been female, and in our opinion pages this week, Janet Shibley Hyde, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, considers why this might be.