The Matilda effect describes how women are systematically ignored when their scientific achievements are recognized
Matilda effect: Definition
Until a few decades ago, most research achievements by women were suppressed. Fame and honor and even the Nobel Prize went to their colleagues or their bosses. Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) first described this problem, that women were (almost) never considered when it came to recognizing research successes, towards the end of the 19th century. The current term “Matilda effect” therefore uses the first name of this US women’s rights activist to describe this phenomenon.
- As the list of Nobel Prize winners shows, 970 Nobel Prizes have been awarded so far, but only 65 have gone to women. This means that the proportion of women is just 6.7 percent (as of January 2024). More than half of the women have been awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature (17) and Peace (19). Their science-related Nobel Prizes for medicine (13), chemistry (8), physics (5) and economics (3) were relatively rare.
- Until around the middle of the 20th century, the following argument was used to justify the frequent suppression of women in science: women were not capable of thinking and arguing strictly logically due to their intellectual capacity. In very simplified terms, this accusation meant that women were simply too “stupid” to carry out scientific research.
- Men therefore had a (supposedly “natural”) dominant position in science and most societies were also patriarchal. Until 1977, for example, men in Germany were still able to decide whether their wives were allowed to work. According to the version of the German Civil Code at the time, a woman’s employment had to be compatible with her duties as a wife and mother.
- In the context of the emancipation movement, more and more women are finally getting the recognition they deserve for their achievements in science. However, women often find it difficult to get into appropriate research professions in science, which is still dominated by men.
Examples of the Matilda effect
One of the oldest examples of the Matilda effect is the mathematician Theano, who lived as the wife of Pythagoras in the 6th century BC. After Pythagoras’ death, she is said to have continued the Pythagorean school together with her two daughters and also wrote her own writings on mathematics. However, Theano’s contribution to the works published only under the name Pythagoras is unproven.
- A second example is the achievements of physics student Mileva Marić (1875 – 1948), who was married to Albert Einstein (1870 – 1955) during his most prolific creative phase. As the University of Heidelberg reports, Albert Einstein wrote in one of his love letters in 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when we have both successfully completed our work on relative motion together.”
- Whether this was a description of their joint scientific work or merely flattery is debatable. In any case, Mileva Marić was a competent, probably inspiring conversation partner, but Albert Einstein never mentioned her in his publications or when he won the Nobel Prize. To this day, her actual contribution to Albert Einstein’s findings remains unclear.
- A third example is the successful research work of the British biochemist Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958). Together with her doctoral student Raymond Gosling, she discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953. But without mentioning these two researchers, James Watson and Francis Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their article on the same topic.
- It was only decades later that Rosalind Franklin’s scientific achievements were fully recognized. This includes, above all, the use of her name for the British Royal Society Prize for the Advancement of Women in Science and Technology, which was established in 2003. The £30,000 Rosalind Franklin Award can, of course, only be won by women.
- A fourth example is the nuclear physicist Lise Meitner (1878 – 1968), who researched radioactivity together with the chemist Otto Hahn (1879 – 1968) in Berlin. Lise Meitner provided the first scientific explanation for the splitting of atomic nuclei. But only Otto Hahn received a Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission in 1944. Lise Meitner became a pacifist and did not take part in the construction of atomic bombs.
- It was not until many years later that Lise Meitner received the recognition she deserved for her important research achievements, e.g. through the use of her name for the “Lise Meitner Prize for Nuclear Physics” of the European Physical Society. Since 2000, the prizes have been awarded every two years to up to four nuclear researchers from Europe and have almost exclusively gone to men.
Counterexamples to the Matilda effect
In recent decades, women have been gaining ground when it comes to Nobel Prizes, as their research achievements are increasingly being recognized. This is shown by the following examples of important scientific discoveries made by women, most of whom were honored together with their male research colleagues.
- 1995, the German biochemist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard (born 1942) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her basic research into the genetic control of early embryonic development.
- In 2008, the French virologist Francoise Barré-Sinoussi (born 1947) was honored with the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of the HI virus as the cause of the disease AIDS.
- 2020 two female gene researchers, American Jennifer A. Doudna (born 1964) and French Emmanuelle Charpentier (born 1968), were the first all-female team to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They invented the gene scissors for the targeted modification of DNA.
- In 2023, the Hungarian-American biochemist Katalin Karikó (born 1955) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of the biochemical prerequisites that enable the production of effective mRNA vaccines against the disease COVID-19. Katalin Karikó works in Mainz at the German company BioNTech, which produces particularly popular coronavirus vaccines.
- Katalin Karikó and Emmanuelle Charpentier in particular hope that their Nobel Prizes will motivate as many women as possible to pursue a career in science.
