The Nobel Prize Gender Gap

Women have increased their presence among Nobel Prize Laureates but the prestigious honor is still a long way from achieving gender parity, highlighting the under-representation of women in the sciences but also in powerful positions in the humanities.

This chart is the first installment of Statista's new weekly series Then & Now.

Journalist Maria Ressa from the Philippines was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Friday. She was the only woman to receive a Nobel Prize in 2021. The latest years when no women were among the laureates were 2017, 2016 and 2012. 2009 was the year with the most female Nobel Prize Laureates (5). The same year, eight men received the prize.

While in the 20 years between 1902 and 1921, only around 4 percent of Nobel Prize Laureates were women, that number was 12.4 percent between 2002 and 2021.