At a June ceremony in the scenic Swiss village of Villars, three scientists each collected a huge new prize: 1 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million) to invest in their research to safeguard the planet against various environmental tipping points. The prizes were courtesy of the Frontiers Research Foundation (FRF), the nonprofit parent of the big open-access publisher. Younger women scientists who co-authored winning papers accompanied their colleagues onto the stage, smiling uncomfortably: All the winners of this year’s Frontiers Planet Prize (FPP), with a cash award bigger than the Nobel Prize, were men, just as they were last year.
The scene was the culmination of an award process that magnifies inequities in planetary boundaries science and in the scientific career structure, five finalists who spoke to Science say. Launched on Earth Day 2022 to honor three outstanding papers proposing solutions to keep the planet within sustainable boundaries, the FPP stipulates that each award’s prize money support the work of one designated “lead scientist”—the individual “who best represents the team” of a winning article.
“I grew frustrated during the ceremony when one award after another went to a man,” says Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, an earth systems scientist at the University of Zürich and a 2024 finalist. Within days, Schaepman-Strub spearheaded a letter to FPP Director Jean-Claude Burgelman and other higher-ups at FRF. It was signed by five of this year’s seven women finalists. “The situation experienced last week was a real setback for gender equality and diversity,” they wrote. “Providing only male colleagues with a substantial grant cements the gender inequality that many universities are fighting against.”
“These things shouldn’t happen anymore,” agrees 2024 finalist Gerard Rocher-Ros, an ecosystem ecologist at Umeå University who was in the audience and shared his displeasure on the social media platform X.
Burgelman says the outcome reflects systemic imbalances in science that no one at the foundation disputes—and that the foundation can’t fix. Only 12% of a “hot list” of 1000 climate scientists published by Reuters in 2021 are women. And of 669 co-authors represented on the 43 papers that have been FPP finalists, Burgelman says, just 169, or 25%, were women. Even fewer authors are from the Global South. “For me the figures do not seem to look as out of proportion based on the reality,” he says. He adds that the prize is the only one of more than 200 sustainability awards that is “run and decided by scientists” and that the foundation is loath to intervene.
Schaepman-Strub blames the structure of the prize. “For me, the main message really is: How can we contribute to improving this prize so it’s really contributing towards a just transformation” in terms of both gender and geography? She and others note although nine of the 43 finalists have been women, just two have come from Africa—both from South Africa—and very few from other countries of the Global South. The foundation is working to boost African representation, says Lise Korsten, president of the African Academy of Sciences, which signed an agreement with FRF to expand the pool of African nominees. “Our aim is to reach out to every single country on the African continent,” Korsten says.
Several finalists Science interviewed said one source of inequity is that the prize winner is a single individual, even though the work honored is almost always collaborative. The “lead scientist” of each paper is designated by universities and research institutes, who submit nominations to a “national representative body.” This group sends a shortlist of three papers to the 100-person FPP jury, which then chooses “national champions.” In 2023, there were 20, two of whom were women. This year, it was seven of 23. From the national champions, the jury awards the prize to three “international champions.” Critics say the prize’s winner-take-all design encourages universities to nominate senior scientists, who are often men, to ensure the money lands at their institutions.
That was the case with Ellen Welti. An entomologist with Smithsonian Institution’s conservation ecology center and Montana State University, Welti co-authored a paper on European freshwater biodiversity with her then–postdoc mentor Peter Haase of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research. The paper notes their equal contributions. However, the society designated Haase as lead scientist. When Welti in July wrote to Burgelman to ask that the FRF split the prize money into two contracts, he declined. “We do advise all [prize winners] to apply just and fair criteria in spending the money,” he wrote.
Haase says he has agreed to support a Ph.D. student in Welti’s lab, which she is in the process of setting up. But he says the gender imbalance is “mandatory” to address going forward. “I am convinced that the foundation will change something in the mechanism and will overcome these issues,” he says.
Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who chose and chaired the FPP jury, says jury members, too—44 of whom are women—have expressed concerns about the sharing of credit. “We don’t want to have senior male professors being the ones who formally sign the [contracts], and then you have a female postdoc scientist [who has] done the heavy lifting.” But, he says, “Scientific excellence … guides us. It’s not for the jury to change the imbalance and the structural challenges” in science.
As this year’s awards nomination process got underway, the foundation had a statement on its website urging that each national nominating body “actively considers diversity and confront unconscious bias” in their selections. It adds, “Embracing diversity will foster equitable outcomes.”
Meanwhile those who contributed to the winning work must pin their hopes on the good will of the named winners. Petra Holden, a conservation and climate change scientist at the University of Cape Town (UCT), was the first author on a 2023 FPP-winning paper. Her mentor Mark New of UCT was declared the international champion, but he asked that both he and Holden be named on the contract transferring the prize money to UCT, and FPP organizers obliged. The funds will support her salary for the next 5 years as a researcher at UCT and allow her to hire three researchers to work with herself and New.
Despite the monetary rewards, Holden hasn’t seen the career-boosting recognition that the prize delivers, including media attention and the ability to list herself as an award winner on her resume.
To her, it’s clear. “The problem is … in the [FPP] organization and nominating bodies,” Holden says. “This prize is being influenced by systemic privileges that come from a legacy of the past. The organization needs to change that.”
