2021 Nobel Winners: Gender Gap Widens as Most Prizes Go to Men

Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for their groundbreaking work in gene editing, is historic in more ways than one. Their win marked the first time a Nobel science prize was given to more than one woman, and no men.

The year 2020 became only the second year in which science prizes were awarded to more than one woman.

Come 2021, eight coveted Nobel Prizes — in medicine, chemistry, physics and literature were all awarded to men, pointing yet again to how women constitute a minuscule number of total winners, especially in science stream.

The Philippines' Maria Ressa, a journalist, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Russia's Dmitry Muratov, is the only woman to receive the award this year.