Nobel Prize Committee Calls on Nominators to Give Up On Merits and Consider Diversity in Gender, Geography. By Cassandra Fairbanks.

The Nobel Prize Committee is no longer just concerned with the merits of your work — instead they are explicitly calling on nominators to “consider diversity in gender, geography and topic for the 2019 prizes.”

Of the 605 people who have won Nobel Prizes in scientific disciplines, only 18 have been women. …

The gentle nudge isn’t “radical” enough for some.

“The smallest possible nudge can make a difference, so I praise them for that,” said Curt Rice, president of Oslo Metropolitan University and head of Norway’s Committee on Gender Balance and Diversity in Research.

Rice isn’t willing to settle for that, however, and is suggesting that nominators be forced to put forward equal numbers of men and women.

“Or the awarding bodies could, for a single year, decide to give all the prizes to women,” Rice also suggested.

Well that just makes the discrimination more official. How much female empowerment is enough?

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific