The Nobel Prize in Economics first went to a woman in 2009.
Elinor Ostrom received the award that year for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. She shared the prize with Oliver E. Williamson, who studied economic governance and the boundaries of firms.
Ostrom’s recognition was historic because the economics prize, created in 1968 and first awarded in 1969, had previously gone only to men. Her research challenged the assumption that shared resources must always be privatized or controlled centrally.
A common mix-up is to confuse the first woman winner with Esther Duflo, who became the second woman laureate in 2019 and the youngest economics laureate at that time. Ostrom remains the first woman to receive the economics prize.