Female scientists as role models

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In the fall of 2020, an encouraging but rather unusual picture goes around the world: two women, Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on CRISPR/Cas9. It was unusual mainly because in this league you would normally expect to see ties rather than colorful scarves: among more than 900 laureates who have been honored with the Nobel Prize since 1901, only 57 have been women so far, despite there being female candidates – and less than half of them came from the natural sciences.

Marie Curie was the first to achieve this feat (twice!), thanks also to the dedicated support of her husband Pierre. Still, the road was difficult. Even away from lofty Nobel Prize heights, it was never easy for women in STEM fields. Some never received the recognition they deserved during their lifetime, like Alice Augusta Ball, who developed the first therapy for leprosy. Others, like the chemist Erika Cremer, worked mostly under- or even unpaid for a long time on their way to full professorship and had to wait several decades for their appointment.

In the meantime, much has changed for the better, but a gap still exists today, especially in the STEM subjects. In Switzerland, for example, 41% of researchers in the higher education sector are women. However, they are significantly underrepresented in natural sciences, technology, and engineering (between 26 and 33% in 2019). In addition, there exists the phenomenon of the "leaky pipeline", which can also be clearly seen in Switzerland. It describes a decrease in the proportion of women with increasing career stage. This also applies to the D-CHAB and D-BIOL.

Measures are being taken to counteract the trend, but much remains to be done. The stories of talented female researchers can help (we meet some in the quiz). They highlight some of the extraordinary achievements of women in science. They were all self-confident enough never to give up and while some received support from male doctorate supervisors, husbands or like-minded female colleagues, others did not. Ultimately, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Doudna and Charpentier is also inspiring because the two women, researching separately on the subject, decided to work together, which eventually led them as a team to the ultimate success.