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:

• American Council on Science and Health: Why Don't Women Win The Nobel Prize?
• Heather Metcalf: Improving Recognition Through Awards: How to Mitigate Bias in Awards
• Anne E. Lincoln, Stephanie Pincus, Janet Bandows Koster, 
  Phoebe S. Leboy: 
  The Matilda Effect in science: Awards and prizes in the US, 1990s and 2000s

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: