I’m sure readers will recall how the Academy Awards were protested because not enough minorities were nominated? (Because, as everyone knows, Hollywood is a hotbed of racism.) Wait until the social justice crowd notices the gender breakdown of Nobel Prizes:
The American Council on Science and Health notes these data, and comments:
And, even when women do win the prize, they are often not given full credit. Dr. Nancy Hopkins, a professor at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Science, has spent a lot of time thinking about women in science, and also served as the Committee Chair of a group that looked into the inequalities that existed between male and female faculty at MIT and published a study called “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT.” Dr. Hopkins says, “I have found that even when women win the Nobel Prize, someone is bound to tell me they did not deserve it, or the discovery was really made by a man, or the important result was made by a man, or the woman really isn’t that smart. This is what discrimination looks like in 2011.”
Wait a minute. Nancy Hopkins? Isn’t this the Nancy Hopkins who nearly fainted when Harvard’s then-president Larry Summers mused aloud (mistake!) about possible aptitude differences between men and women in math and science? Why, yes—yes, it is. As The Atlantic reported on that famous episode:
The most remarkable feminist exercise in self-parody was that of MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, who famously told reporters that she “felt I was going to be sick,” that “my heart was pounding and my breath was shallow,” that “I just couldn’t breathe, because this kind of bias makes me physically ill,” and that she had to flee the room because otherwise “I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.”
How long before there are demands for gender-based quotas for the Nobel Prize? What’s wrong with those Nordic folk anyway?
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