Wednesday, August 09, 2017

The Massry Prize is a #YAMMA (yet another mostly male award) #MatildaEffect #Massry #GenderBias

I was really pleased to see the announcement that the 2017 Massry Prize was awarded to Norm Pace, Jeffrey Gordon and Rob Knight.  Alas, then someone pointed me to the web site listing past winners of the prize. Massry Prize.  And I compiled the list (with some help from Wikipedia)

Massry Prize
Yet Another Mostly Male Award
YAMMA
  1. 1996 Michael Berridge 
  2. 1997 Judah Folkman 
  3. 1998 Mark Ptashne 
  4. 1999 Gunter Blobel 
  5. 2000 Leland H. Hartwell 
  6. 2001 Avram Hershko
  7. 2001 Alexander Varshavsky 
  8. 2002 Mario Capecchi
  9. 2002 Oliver Smithies 
  10. 2003 Roger Kornberg
  11. 2003 David Allis 
  12. 2003 Michael Grunstein 
  13. 2004 Ada Yonath 
  14. 2004 Harry Noller 
  15. 2005 Andrew Fire
  16. 2004 Craig Mello 
  17. 2004 David Baulcombe 
  18. 2006 Akira Endo
  19. 2007 Michael Phelps 
  20. 2008 Shinya Yamanaka
  21. 2008 James A. Thomson
  22. 2008 Rudolf Jaenisch 
  23. 2009 Gary Ruvkun
  24. 2009 Victor Ambros 
  25. 2010 Randy Schekman 
  26. 2011 F. Ulrich Hartl 
  27. 2011 Arthur Horwich
  28. 2012 Michael Rosbash
  29. 2012 Jeffrey C. Hall
  30. 2012 Michael W. Young 
  31. 2013 Michael Sheetz
  32. 2013 James A. Spudich 
  33. 2013 Ronald D. Vale 
  34. 2014 Steven Rosenberg
  35. 2014 Zelig Eshhar 
  36. 2014 James P. Allison
  37. 2015 Philippe Horvath
  38. 2015 Jennifer Doudna 
  39. 2015 Emmanuelle Charpentier
  40. 2016 Gero Miesenböck
  41. 2016 Peter Hegemann
  42. 2016 Karl Deisseroth
  43. 2017 Rob Knight
  44. 2017 Jeff Gordon
  45. 2017 Norm Pace
42 male
3 female

I colored them based on my inference of gender. I realize that I may have some of this wrong and that using a binary system is not right in many cases but I think this certainly shows a pattern.  I also realize there are many possible explanations for the imbalance here but I think it is reasonable to consider that bias against women may be a component of this. 

Some useful reading in regard to prizes in the sciences:
Not sure what to do here with this information.  I deeply respect the award winners here and think they are highly deserving of important science awards.  But it pains me to see such a big skew in the gender balance of winners of this Massry Prize and think, sadly, that there is likely some kind of bias at work here.  When there is a bias against recognizing the achievements of women it is known as the Matilda Effect.  I suggest everyone involved in handing out awards such as this, and anyone reporting on such awards, should read up on it.

I note - I posted the gender ratio of winners of this award to the Gender Avenger site. See below:

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