Two Women Won Nobel Prizes in 2026. The Gender Gap Persists.

Women were honored with two Nobel Prizes in 2026 — Canadian writer Anne Carson for her groundbreaking contributions to literature and South African human rights lawyer Navanethem "Navi" Pillay for her decades-long fight for international justice. But 125 years after the first Nobel Prizes were handed out, gender parity among the world's most prestigious award recipients remains elusive.

On Thursday, Carson, 76, received the Nobel Prize in Literature for a body of work that blends poetry, prose, classical scholarship and translation. The Nobel committee praised “her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

Asked in an interview immediately after being told of her win whether she’d considered what the prize might mean to her, Carson demurred.

“No, I haven’t,” she said, adding that she and her husband were just starting to think about ways in which they could give away the money. (The award is 12 million Swedish kronor, or about US$1.2 million.) “We have a friend who needs a house, and we always give a lot to Doctors Without Borders.”

On Friday, Pillay, 85, a lawyer who challenged apartheid in South Africa,  was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote peace and international law. She became the first woman to establish a law practice in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, (then known as Natal) in 1967. She later became the first woman of color appointed to South Africa's High Court, before serving as a judge on international criminal tribunals and as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Her work has helped establish accountability for atrocities, including sexual violence committed during conflict.

“Today’s prize is a tribute to all those working to uphold and defend international law, the rule of law and human rights, and secure peace, justice and human dignity,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres commented on hearing of Pillay’s win. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, condemned the Nobel Prize committee and accused it of having “lost its moral compass.” 

Pillay previously chaired a 2025 United Nations commission that concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza — a finding Israel rejected.

U.S. President Donald Trump reacted by describing Pillay as “a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of.” He then added — as he has before — that he should have received the Nobel Peace Prize. “And this is an indelible stain on the country of Norway and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision.”

The Nobel Prizes recognize extraordinary achievements, often the culmination of decades of work. But their history also reflects the barriers that women have faced when it comes to entering, advancing in and receiving recognition for their contributions to science, economics and other fields.

Of the 10 individual Nobel laureates recognized in 2026, two were women — or 20%. That is higher than the historical share of just shy of 7%, but still far from parity.

The record for the greatest number of women honored in a single year was set in 2009, when five women received Nobel Prizes, accounting for approximately 38.5% of the 13 individual laureates. Those winners included Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the Economics Prize, and Herta Müller who won the Literature Prize. Three other women shared the prize with men that year: Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider for the Physiology or Medicine Prize and Ada Yonath for Chemistry. 

Since the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, 70 prizes have been awarded to women, including two to Marie Curie, who won in Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. Curie is still the only person to receive the prize in two different science categories. In total, more than 1,000 Nobel laureate honors have been bestowed over the prize's history, meaning that only about 6.8% have gone to women. 

Women have historically been especially underrepresented in physics and economics. Just three women have, for example, received the Economics Prize: Ostrom in 2009, Esther Duflo in 2019 and Claudia Goldin in 2023.

The achievements of this year's women laureates are remarkable. Their continued rarity is a reminder of how unevenly recognition has been distributed.