“No field can afford to ignore or alienate half its potential contributors” writes Virginia Valian, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Hunter College, and Roosevelt House Faculty Associate, in the issue of Nature International Journal of Science. Valian has spent her career studying the structural and psychological reasons for the paucity of women at the top of almost every field in academia. Her new article “Two Nobels for women – why so slow?” cites several recent studies, analyses, and headlines, and demonstrates that despite two women receiving Nobel prizes in science this year, a perceptible bias against women persists. Valian writes, “Why am I discussing this backsliding talk in a happy week of two Nobel prizes for women? Because the talk matters: children, students, graduates, assistant professors and others develop an idea of what they can aspire to be in part by seeing who have become lecturers and principal investigators — as well as who wins prizes.”