Women need platforms to celebrate excellence in research and technology

Last week, three outstanding researchers were recognized with prizes to advance their work by the inaugural Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature. Each won US$250,000 to support and accelerate their technology-focused research.

Kiana Aran, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego, was given a mid-career award for her work, which is at the intersection of biology, artificial intelligence (AI), electronics and materials science, investigating the use of fingertip sensors to detect genetic and viral diseases¹. She has also established a non-profit organization that mentors women in engineering.

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Computational scientist Amanda Randles at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, also received a mid-career award to study how a ‘digital twin’ technology she developed to guide interventions for people with heart disease might be used for early interventions for cancer².

Yating Wan at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, received the early-career prize. She works in silicon photonics on research that focuses on improving the energy efficiency of data communication and information processing³. In addition, Jiawen Li, a biomedical engineer based at the University of Adelaide, Australia, received a special judges’ commendation for her work creating a hair-thin endoscope that can be used in blood vessels, combining work on nanometre-scale 3D printing with optical-fibre technology⁴.

In the world of research, gender-specific awards can come in for criticism, with an incorrect perception that they are somehow lesser than awards for which gender is not an application criterion. To be clear, these winners would be judged as excellent in any pool. And it is well known that research grants and awards in science and technology systematically fail to adequately recognize women and other under-represented groups.

A smaller share of women apply for grants and awards compared with men, and, when they do win, they receive comparatively lower award values⁵. Some, albeit modest, efforts to change things are under way, and seem to be helping⁶, but change is slow, as we have reported on a number of previous occasions.

These are among the reasons why gender-specific awards exist, why more are needed — and why Nature is proud to be associated with awards of this type. Women need platforms through which their voices can be heard, and for their outstanding contributions to research to be recognized and celebrated, to enable them to access appropriate support, and to build the networks they need to take their projects forwards.

Wider benefits

Such awards offer other benefits, too. By doing more to recognize half the population, companies, universities and other research-focused organizations are simultaneously boosting creativity, which, in turn, helps to achieve their broader goals.

Take the experience of the United Kingdom’s largest public funder of innovation-focused research and development, Innovate UK. Its annual Women in Innovation scheme awards innovators, including scientists and engineers, with £75,000 (US$94,600), together with access to business support, mentoring and peer networking. Since its launch, there has been a marked increase in successful applications from teams led by women for Innovate UK’s grants, which are worth a total of more than £1 billion annually. When the award was established in 2016, teams led by women won one in seven of these grants. Now, the number is one in three.

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The importance of setting numerical targets is underscored in a World View by Kaori Hayashi, the executive vice-president of the University of Tokyo, who describes efforts to increase women’s representation at the university (Nature 638, 295; 2025). She underlines the need for targets to be realistic. Hayashi also tackles the perception that efforts that target women foster impostor syndrome by making women feel unworthy of their positions. “It is only ‘positive discrimination’ insofar as it counters the negative discrimination that women are otherwise subjected to,” she writes.

We can imagine a day when awards for women will no longer be necessary; that day will come when women are represented fairly among prizewinners. For now, we must continue to offer opportunities for outstanding female researchers to get the credit they deserve. On that note, the Nature Awards Inspiring Women in Science are now open (see go.nature.com/4b4dcyz). These awards celebrate and support the achievements of women in science, of those who work to encourage girls and young women to engage with science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine, and of those who work to support women to help them stay in those careers around the world. Through these awards, we hope to play a small part in levelling the playing field for women everywhere.