Nobel Awards to Women by Category, 1901–2026

Peace leads with 21 awards to women, followed by Literature with 19 and Physiology or Medicine with 14. Chemistry has eight, Physics five and Economic Sciences three. All six categories are shown, rather than inventing a top ten.

The official Nobel API returns 69 female laureates with 70 award records through the 2026 announcements. We count each laureate-category-year record once, including a shared prize as one award to each woman; prize fractions and money are not summed. Marie Curie contributes one Physics and one Chemistry award, so the six bars sum to awards, not unique women. The Economic Sciences category is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, first awarded in 1969.

The 2026 additions are Anne Carson in Literature and Navi Pillay in Peace. This snapshot includes announced 2026 awards before the December ceremony. The category totals are not female shares of all laureates and cannot establish equal opportunity or selection bias without denominators and further evidence.

Sources checked October 28, 2026. Equal values are ties; display order does not break a tie.