Counting Genius, Missing Women

A personal look at Nobel prizes, unpaid labour, and how patriarchy skews recognition

A little bit about me before we start. I am British and will therefore write from that perspective. I am just an ordinary woman in her 50s but I have a wealth of experience and some strong opinions. However, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, if you don’t like them, I have others. I write from a personal point of view but will do the necessary research to back up my ideas. I am a Christian, feminist, left-handed vegetarian in my fifties, which means I am well-practised at challenging conventions.

Disclaimer: this is not an attack on men in general, it is a critique of the system of patriarchy which harms us all, so, please no “not all men” comments because, to my gentleman readers, this is important for you too. While I include a personal example from my first marriage, it isn’t to demean him or throw shade, it is to show how men and women view things very differently.

I guess I didn’t realise I was a feminist until the 1990s. It was all those videos of men singing while scantily clad young women writhed around them that did it for me, and don’t get me started on Shaggy “It Wasn’t Me” - catchy song but sexist as hell. I also worked in mental health nursing which has a higher ratio of men to women than other types of nursing. Of course, most of them were good guys but the misogynistic comments and sexual inuendo made my blood boil. I looked back at many of the books I read as a child and realised that the girl characters were almost always secondary to the male characters, even if the books were coded “girls only” and no boy would be caught dead reading them.

THE NOBEL PRIZES - GENDER INEQUALITY IN ACTION

To show how gender inequality still persists even in supposedly objective arenas, I looked at the Nobel Prizes. Two women won a prize - out of thirteen awarded. I am delighted that the peace prize went to Maria Corina Machado (yes, I know she might not be as pure as the driven snow, but that isn’t the point of this article) and not to the war mongering orange chap who currently resides in the White House. If you have read the book or seen the series Good Omens you will remember the scene with War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If not, see the You Tube link below.

Anyway, I digress. The six categories of Nobel prizes are Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine, Literature, Economics and the coveted Peace prize. In 2025 two women won prizes, which gives us a percentage of 15.38% for the two women. Not too bad, you think? But if you look deeper, only 6 percent of all Nobel winners have been women, less than one in sixteen, despite more than a century of awards.
Also the majority of prize winners are white men. “Well, what a surprise” I thought to myself, with sarcasm dripping like honey.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

I can hear you shouting “will you just get to the point!” Well, actually there are several points that need to be made. The first one is how many women have actually been overlooked for prizes simply because they are women? There still remains controversy about Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to the discovery of DNA as a double helix. Some accounts say she was a knowing and willing contributor and others say that her work was glossed over by Watson, Crick and Wilkins to erase her work. Sadly, she died of ovarian cancer at a young age and by the time her contribution was recognised, the rule allowing posthumous prizes to be awarded had been revoked.

Secondly, do we think that the prizes are skewed towards males in the first place? In a way, yes, they are. The nomination process remains shrouded in mystery but if those with the authority to nominate people overlook women’s contributions, then how can they be awarded a prize? And even after 2020 when the Nobel Foundation requested that nominees are sought from diverse backgrounds, that doesn’t matter a jot if those nominations don’t turn into wins. Thus, most of the prizes go to American and European white men. Also, as Helen Lewis describes in her book “The Genius Myth”, we also have to ask ourselves who are the gatekeepers of who gets to known as a genius and who doesn’t. You guessed it - men. Women’s work is devalued because, well, it’s women’s work. There is the tacit belief that men are inherently valuable and women are inherently worthless.

A PERSONAL EXAMPLE

The third is that men have so much more freedom to spend long hours on research, writing papers and getting their work published. The following is an example of how men have more free time and earn more than women even in the same job. When I was married to my late husband, John, we were both mental health nurses. John worked long shifts, I worked shorter ones, but between children, housework, and emotional labour, my workday never ended. He earned more, and I slept less. I remember one day when I had the day off and was so tired I could have cried. The phone kept ringing but I refused to answer it. Then John came home from work unexpectedly. The school had been trying to contact me because one of our sons was unwell. It took them several hours to realise said son had a father(!) so they eventually called him. I felt mortified, but I doubt if John felt the kind of guilt I felt while I was a working Mum. To be fair to John, he was a doting dad and was the chief cook on the days he was off, but I am sure you get the picture. I was doing two jobs and earning less than my husband. Don’t get me wrong, he was one of the good guys, he did not treat me or the children as his possessions and saw me as a fully grown adult human with a mind of her own, and I still miss him everyday. I didn’t really realise how much he did until he wasn’t there to do it.

Given the example above, for all those white men who won the awards, who do you think was doing their laundry, looking after any dependents, making sure the house ran smoothly and attending parents’ evenings? The idea that these men are completely independent is a myth. They might be lauded as geniuses, but wouldn’t have a clue how to use a washing machine. I believe Zawn Villines calls it “weaponised incompetence”. Just this morning I heard a story from a lady who has just returned to university. She had to spend three nights away from her family. Her husband is also one of the good guys, but when their dog was sick, he complained that it was unfair because he had to deal with it.

Many people don’t recognise this system because it is the water we swim in. Women have been taught from a young age that other people are more important than themselves. That getting married and having children is their ultimate life goal. We are told to supress any anger because it’s “unladylike”, and to forego our own dreams to care for everyone else. We are not allowed to exist as full human beings but rather as an add-on for men’s convenience.

I would also argue that the same system does not allow men to live as fully as they can either. When they are taught that “boys don’t cry” and any sign of being like a girl is flung back at them in mocking tones, they cannot allow themselves to show vulnerability or ask for help. Not being able to express their emotions leads to anger and violence, which is why more men complete suicide than women. According to the ONS: For males, the suicide rate in England and Wales was 17.6 suicide deaths registered per 100,000 people, the suicide rate remained stable for females at 5.7 suicide deaths registered per 100,000 people in 2024 and in 2023. They use far more violent methods, such as firearms and so on, than women. However, far more women have suicidal ideation (Gender Differences in Risks of Suicide and Suicidal Behaviors in the USA: A Narrative Review - PMC - link below) and use methods such as drug overdoses which, when they fail, are attributed to attention seeking, rather than a genuine attempt to end one’s life. Women’s anger tends to be expressed in different ways. We tend to internalise it and either cry or become sarcastic or sulk or be passive-aggressive (all the ways I deal with anger, I confess), but rarely violent - although slamming doors is another preferred method of letting someone know when a woman is angry.

CONCLUSION

Getting back to the Nobel prizes, men’s work is disproportionately recognised because of the bias towards men and the devaluing of women. When a system cuts out the voices of half of the population on Earth, women suffer. When it is further cut down to include only heterosexual white men, even more people suffer - see racism, classism, anti-gay, anti-trans and many more marginalised groups. We need their voices too. I assume that’s why DEI was thrown on the rubbish heap in the US - because it challenged white male supremacy. And we can’t have that, can we? As the saying goes “when you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression”.

My feminist hero is Caroline Craido Perez. Her book “Invisible Women” is the feminist tome for this age and her Substack newsletters are like a little gift in my inbox. I want to echo her mantra: Women are not small men. We don’t even want to be like men. We just want the opportunities and recognition that men enjoy and we want men to have the opportunities we do: to love, to be a parent, and to see other people as human beings, not things to possess or exploit. We do so much to support the infrastructure by doing unpaid labour at home and working in paid employment. If mothers were paid for their work, we would earn over £400,000 a year, but no one seems to want to recognise our important work. It reminds me of the cartoon where a man gets home from work and the house is a mess, the children are running amok and the Mum is sitting on the sofa (hopefully with a glass of wine in hand) and he says “What the hell is going on?” and she answers “Well, you know you think I do nothing all day while you’re at work? Today I actually did do nothing”.

Here is a collection of links related to the specific people, concepts, and statistics discussed.

Nobel Prize and Gender Disparity

The text references the percentage of women receiving Nobel Prizes over history and issues of bias.

The low representation of women is explored in the article Why don’t women win Nobel science prizes?, which discusses how few women nominees are a key reason men often sweep the awards: Why don’t women win Nobel science prizes? | Hannah Devlin | The Guardian. A deeper academic examination of this topic is available in the paper Nobel Nominations in Science: Constraints of the Fairer Sex: Nobel Nominations in Science: Constraints of the Fairer Sex - PMC.

---

Rosalind Franklin Controversy

The text questions Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to the discovery of DNA. The controversy surrounding her role and the Nobel Prize awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins is detailed in:

● Sexism in Science: Was Rosalind Franklin Robbed of a Nobel Prize? from the LMU Newsroom: Sexism in Science: Was Rosalind Franklin Robbed of a Nobel Prize? - LMU Newsroom.

● Information on How Dr Rosalind Franklin contributed to the story of life is available from King’s College London: How Dr Rosalind Franklin contributed to the story of life.

---

Gender and Work/Economics

The discussion about unpaid labour, women’s work, and salary value is linked to the following resources:

The potential earnings for a mother’s work, which the text estimates at over £400,000, is supported by an analysis in the article How much should a mother earn? which calculated a figure over £467,000 a year: How much should a mother earn? - HR News.

The critique of economics and the exclusion of women’s labour is the subject of the book Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? A Story About Women and Economics by Katrine Marçal: Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? A Story About Women and Economics - Goodreads.

The term “weaponised incompetence” is attributed to Zawn Villines, who writes on feminist advice and motherhood, including a column relevant to the discussion on chores: Liberating Motherhood - Zawn Villines. Zawn Villines’s Substack, Liberating Motherhood, is also referenced: Liberating Motherhood - Audioboom.

---

Anger, Emotion, and Suicide Rates

The section on gender differences in expressing anger and in suicide rates is supported by these links:

Regarding the difference in suicidal behaviour, males die by suicide three to four times more often than females in the Western world, while suicide attempts are between two and four times more frequent among females: Gender differences in suicide - Wikipedia. See also Here is a collection of links related to the specific people, concepts, and statistics discussed.

See also Gender Differences in Risks of Suicide and Suicidal Behaviors in the USA: A Narrative Review - PMC

Suicides in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

---

---

Books, Authors, and Quotes

● Caroline Criado Perez’s book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, is described as a “feminist tome.” Details and purchase links are here: Invisible Women | Caroline Criado Perez.

So you want to be a genius? - by Caroline Criado Perez

● Helen Lewis’s book, The Genius Myth, which questions the concept of ‘genius’ and its gatekeepers, can be found here: The Genius Myth - Helen Lewis - Penguin Books.

● The quote, “When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” is often attributed to screenwriter and executive Franklin Leonard, and the quote’s context is available here: Quote by Franklin Leonard: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality f...” - Goodreads.

An article discussing the social conditioning around women’s anger is The Power and Shame of Women’s Anger: The Power and Shame of Women’s Anger | Psychology Today United Kingdom.

---