Women, nonwhite individuals lacking in ‘pool’ of Lasker Award recipients
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Key takeaways:
- The Lasker Award is a scientific award that often precedes the Nobel Prize.
- Only one nonwhite woman has ever received a Lasker Award.
While the percentage of women and nonwhite individuals in academic medicine and biomedical research has increased, the proportion of women among recipients of the Lasker Award has not changed in more than 7 decades.
The findings, published in The BMJ, additionally showed that the time from receipt of terminal degree to delivery of Lasker Award did not appear to solely account for the inequities observed, researchers noted.
Lasker Foundation representatives did not respond to Healio’s request for comment.
Documented inequities
“Numerous studies have documented inequities in academic research and awards, in particular the Nobel Prize. The Lasker Award is a major scientific award that often precedes the Nobel Prize; thus, inequities in the Lasker Award could have an impact on how Nobel Prizes are awarded,” Elizabeth S. Allen, MD, pathologist and associate professor of pathology at UC San Diego Health, told Healio. “As a group, we are interested in and committed to studying diversity, equity and inclusion issues in science and medicine, in hopes of shedding light on these topics and bringing about change.”
The observational, population-based, cross-sectional analysis examined whether gender and racial inequities exist among recipients of Lasker Awards between 1946 and 2022.
Gender and race of all award recipients served as the main outcome.
Researchers used previously established methods to categorize personal characteristics of 397 award recipients.
Results showed most Lasker Award recipients were men (92.2%) and white (95.7%).
Of note, only one nonwhite woman ever received a Lasker Award.
“In a span of more than 70 years, less than 8% of all Lasker Awards have been awarded to women, and less than 5% have been awarded to nonwhite individuals,” Allen said. “In addition, the proportion of female Lasker Award recipients between 2013 and 2022 is no different than it was between 1946 and 1955. Since 2014, the Lasker Foundation has published statements emphasizing the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. Among the award recipients since that time, 87% were men and 13% were women — those proportions are unchanged from the decade prior between 2004 and 2013.”
Call for change
The findings indicate the need for additional research to examine possible factors that could hinder women and nonwhite individuals from entering the pool of eligible award recipients, according to the researchers.
“Organizations in medicine and science must actively pursue excellence and recognize that physicians and scientists from diverse backgrounds may be overlooked, despite being highly qualified and deserving of awards,” Allen told Healio. “This is an area of active investigation for our group, and we hope our research can lead to meaningful change in medicine and academics.”
For more information:
Elizabeth S. Allen, MD, can be reached at esallen@health.ucsd.edu.
Perspective
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Shikha Jain, MD, FACP
This is an incredibly important study that shows, yet again, that women are less likely to be awarded prestigious awards — despite the fact there are many qualified, and often overqualified women, who are often overlooked.
Sadly, these findings did not surprise me. This has been a well-documented disparity in many parts of medicine and science. Fewer than 3% of Nobel Science winners are women, and it is not because they are not doing the work. All we need to do is look historically at the number of women whose names have been erased from incredible contributions and attributed to their male colleagues, including Rosalind Franklin, Katherine Johnson, Eunice Foote, Alice Ball, Hedy Lamarr and many more. Women’s discoveries and pioneering work have been credited to others for centuries and, unfortunately, we continue to see these things perpetuated.
This phenomenon has been described and researched extensively. For example, in one study by Silver and colleagues, researchers described the underrepresentation of women physicians among recognition award recipients from medical specialty societies. The Matilda effect is another common phenomenon that describes these disparities.
It is beyond time for us to address the elephant in the room. Women are not nominated for these awards, women do not receive these awards, and it is not because the women are not qualified or doing the work. The data has shown this time and again. We need intentional solutions to fix this pervasive inequity.
There is so much that should and could be done to change this. We can intentionally sponsor women. We can intentionally nominate women. We can ensure that our own implicit biases don’t impact our decisions to not promote or amplify certain individuals’ work. We need to be looking at the table and determine whose voice is not represented.
References:
- Patel SR, et al. Oncologist. 2021;doi:10.1002/onco.13871.
- Silver JK, et al. PM R. 2017;doi:10.1016/j.pmrj.2017.06.001.
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