Nobel committee says it hopes to see more female winners 'in 5 to 10 years' after men dominate yet again

Though the group that won the Peace prize this year is led by a woman, the award is for the organisation

Beatrice Fihn, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. No individual women were awarded a Nobel prize in the last two years. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

For the second year in a row, no women were awarded Nobel prizes and the committee said it hopes that will change in “in five years, 10 years”.

Nobel committee officials said there was “concern” after it realised only men had won the coveted recognition yet again.

Head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Goran Hansson said that he “hope[s] in five years, 10 years, we'll see a very different distribution."

He did not indicate the reason as to why the committee only acknowledged this issue now when the same problem occurred last year.

Each of the six prizes is chosen by a different committee, three of which are currently headed by women.

Three of the prize committees are within the sciences academy.

Mr Hansson said he did not believe there was systemic gender discrimination, but "we are concerned; we are taking measures".

He did not specify what those measures were or why he thought it would take up to a decade for that to change, however.

The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Forty-eight women have been awarded the Nobel prize since its inception in 1901, with physicist Marie Curie winning twice.

An award has gone to woman 19 times between 2001 and 2015.

This year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

The group is led by a woman, Beatrice Fihn in Geneva, but the award is for the organisation as a whole.

Agencies contributed to this report