Matilda effect

"Science is stratified, with an unequal distribution of research facilities and rewards among scientists. Awards and prizes, which are critical for shaping scientific career trajectories, play a role in this stratification when they differentially enhance the status of scientists who already have large reputations: the ‘’. Contrary to the – the expectation that the personal attributes of scientists do not affect evaluations of their scientific claims and contributions – in practice, a great deal of evidence suggests that the scientific efforts and achievements of women do not receive the same recognition as do those of men: the ‘Matilda Effect’. Awards in are not immune to these biases. ... While women’s receipt of professional awards and prizes has increased in the past two decades, men continue to win a higher proportion of awards for scholarly research than expected based on their representation in the nomination pool."

"The undervaluing of minorities and their researcher contributions reduces when a threshold level of minority representation (between 15 and 30%) is reached in a group or community. Botany is celebrated as a discipline in which women have been able to make important contributions, especially in the past. At the same time, other s have raised worries that women's research contributions are being neglected or dismissed not just in the past but even currently. Based on data on the representation of women authors in 15 , I will suggest that the difference between botany and other disciplines may arise from the numbers and proportions of women. The contributions made by women in botany could not be as easily dismissed or neglected as elsewhere in biology due to women's higher representation in botany."

"Recent work has brought to light so many cases, historical and contemporary, of who have been ignored, denied credit or otherwise dropped from sight that a sex-linked phenomenon seems to exist, as has been documented to be the case in other fields, such as medicine, art history and . Since this systematic bias in scientific information and recognition practices fits the second half of Matthew 13:12 in the Bible, which refers to the under-recognition accorded to those who have little to start with, it is suggested that can add to the , made famous by Robert K. Merton in 1968, the 'Matilda Effect', named for the American suffragist and feminist critic of , who in the late nineteenth century both experienced and articulated this phenomenon. Calling attention to her and this age-old tendency may prod future scholars to include other such 'Matildas' and thus to write a better, because more comprehensive, and ."