About a century ago, Marie Sklodowska-Curie, in spite of her outstanding work and discoveries which led to two Nobel prizes Physics and Chemistry , had to struggle for recognition within the French scientific community, mostly dominated by male physicists. Because Pierre insisted that her name be added to the proposal transmitted to the Nobel Committee by the French Academy of Sciences for their work on radiation phenomena which originally contained only the names of Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie , she became in the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize.
This of course did not instantly demolish all the barriers that women were facing, even one as renowned as Marie Sklodowska-Curie. As an example, because she was a woman, she was never elected at the French Academy of Sciences. Since and until her death, she hired 45 women, never practicing discriminatory selection among men and women scientists.
In her lifetime, she received several awards, medals and even a second Nobel Prize in chemistry in But even then, the press remained mostly silent and the recognition in her field of work was rather limited. More than 60 years after her death, her remains and those of Pierre were transferred to the Pantheon. It is worth noting that to this date, she is still the only woman to be interred in the Pantheon on her personal merit alone.
They have demonstrated not only the capabilities of women in sciences but also the fact that having children and caring for a family was not an obstacle for conducting research and directing important scientific centers.
Although considerable progress has been achieved in this matter, there is still a deficiency of female scientists at the highest levels of the hierarchy and in positions of important duties and authority in most of the scientific disciplines. We are not yet even close to equality⦠In parallel, as illustrated by some recent largely mediatized terrible revelations, some women are still suffering from sexual harassment, in laboratories or in Universities, as everywhere else.
