The latest statistics show that there in total 17 female scientists were awarded Nobel Prize in sciences till present, accounting closely to 3% of the total number of winners. Though the majority of Nobel Prize winners in sciences are male, it not means that this prize is set for the award of men’s game at all.
Compared with the male practitioner in science, there is much fewer women working in the field, which is why only a minority of women in history had been awarded to this prize. The reason ranking first should be sex discrimination. Women as the other group of sex was discriminated by man group in history (the environment, not mean every man in the past owned a discriminating altitude toward women), which is especially because women lack of physical power. Women were not capable of jobs requiring labor and could only take care of the family, thus they were supposed to stay at home without an official job. The situation improved until women realize that they are equal to men in many aspects. Then the feminist movement broke out.
The second biggest obstacle hindering women from contributing more to science should be religious and poverty. In oriental countries where the population density is much higher than any other areas, like China, most women had no access to education, either because of poverty or religious problems. Once women who were uneducated were considered being moral in ancient China.
The statistics also showed that a high portion of the female Nobel Laureate scientist is from Jewish background. The suggested reason for this is that Jew has always been highly valuing the desire for learning and education.
In recent years there are more female scientists got to known by the public for the award of Nobel Prize. Isn’t that an outcome of the civilization improvement in a worldwide scale? The answer should be definitely yes. With the feminism revolution, women are equal to man in almost every area and aspect. Besides education has been listed as a priority for the development of a nation, which is one of accelerating factor of the positive change.
Women are also with the potential power and ability to discover new matters. There is remark from an article in The Guardian, which goes “with so many diseases still without a cure, humankind cannot afford to ignore 50% of potential discoverers”. Female scientists are shouldering the same responsibility of improving the life quality of the whole humankind.