With 2023 seeing the fifth woman in history to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics, Katherine Skipper considers what Physics World’s coverage tells us about the changing roles and opportunities for women in physics
Sunday 11 February 2024 is the ninth International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Established in 2015 by the United Nations, the event aims to promote women’s and girls’ participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and to highlight gender disparities in these fields.
We know that women make up a disproportionate minority of physicists, and they continue to face both outright and implicit biases in their work. That’s why this year’s International Day was marked by an assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, featuring panel discussions and an exhibition for female youth that showcased careers in science. It will also see organizations including governments and universities promoting opportunities for female scientists.
Physics World has also done a lot in recent years to cover the work of female physicists and report on efforts to achieve gender equality in physics. In case you missed it, here’s a round-up of highlights over the last year. You can also read our online collection of articles on women in physics.
An ongoing conversation
One significant new initiative to tackle gender discrimination is the $3m Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund, which funds physics PhD students in the UK and Ireland from under-represented groups. In June 2023 it announced its fourth cohort of students and Helen Gleeson, the physicist who chairs the selection panel for the fund, wrote in Physics World about what the scholarship has achieved. Thanks to the fund, 31 students who would otherwise struggle to access physics graduate programmes have been able to pursue research that they are passionate about.
Moiya McTier: from scientist to science communicator
Meanwhile, the theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein from the University of New Hampshire, who is a contributing columnist for Physics World, explained how her frustration at the lack of information about Black woman role models in physics led her to compile a bibliography of their papers. In addition, Physics World editor-in-chief Matin Durrani wrote about how the rule against self-nomination for awards such as the Nobel Prize can hinder scientists from under-represented backgrounds.
Looking to the past
Gender disparities in physics are, of course, far from being a new topic of discussion. In 2002 Physics World ran an article about female physicists that featured comments from Anne L’Huillier, who said she believed that having female physics professors as role models would encourage more girls to pursue the subject. In 2023 L’Huillier was one of three winners of last year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. In doing so, she became the fifth woman in history to win the award, recognized for her work on attosecond pulses.
Gender disparities in physics are, of course, far from being a new topic of discussion
Another physicist featured in that 2002 article was the late Deborah Jin, who said that subtle, sometimes unintentional biases against female physicists are often more prevalent than outright sexism. Jin’s pioneering experimental work on Bose–Einstein condensates was covered this year in Chad Orzel’s series of three features on the history of laser cooling.
Other Physics World features on the history of women in physics included the story of the nuclear physicist Gertrude Scharff–Goldhaber, and the codebreaker Emily Anderson. Scharff-Goldhaber was a German born Jewish physicist who fled Nazi oppression to the US; she went on to have a wide-ranging career and is known for her work on the “low-energy” physics of excited nuclei. Anderson was a skilled mathematician and linguist whose career for the British Foreign Office spanned both world wars.
Diverse paths for women in physics
Over the last year, Physics World has also given plenty of coverage to the careers of women in physics, highlighting the diversity of contributions made by female physicists, which stretch from biophysics and quantum physics to materials and astronomy and cosmology . The women profiled have forged careers not only in academia but also in finance, science communication, software engineering, teaching and even science policy, in the form of Cathy Foley — Australia’s chief scientist. What’s more, some have projects in both academia and industry — such as Silvia Vignolini, who spoke about building start-ups from her photonics research.
Many of the women profiled spoke about the changing attitudes towards women in physics, as well as persistent problems. Astronomer Wen-fai Fong encouraged younger researchers to focus on the science, saying “Women are still under-represented in physics but I never fixate on that.” Meanwhile, in her interview with Physics World, theoretical physicist Nicola Spaldin spoke about her role on the European Research Council’s Scientific Council, which has recently changed its evaluation criteria to reflect the fact that female scientists are often less able to migrate for work than their male counterparts.
The female physicists featured in Physics World last year were united by their curiosity and their drive to push at the boundaries of our knowledge of the universe. This collection of stories shows that, despite existing challenges for gender equality, the work of women in physics is not, and has never been, a separate narrative from that of physics as a whole.
