Women in watchmaking

My friend Jasmine Audemars and Fabienne Lupo spring to mind. Women with immense vision, strength of character, proverbial discretion and admirable persistence who have made critical inroads into a traditionally masculine environment. There isn’t a Nobel Prize for Fine Watchmaking, but should the Swedes one day decide to add this category to the list, there would be no shortage of female aspirants. Utopia?

Glancing through the roster of female Nobel Prize winners – there are some, but still only a tiny minority compared with men – gives food for thought on two counts. First, the enormous effort these women scientists, writers and researchers must have made in order to assert themselves in such a male-dominated world, exactly as in Fine Watchmaking. Secondly, the passion and tenacity they all showed in order to reach such summits of experience, through selfless devotion that honours their talent.

As March 8th nears, instead of brandishing mimosa it would perhaps be wiser and more instructive to reflect on the examples that women laureates continue to offer. Think of the greatness of personalities such as Grazia Deledda, the first Italian woman to receive the honour, or Pearl Buck whose novels helped educate entire generations. Think of Gerty Cori, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1947, or the poetess Gabriela Mistral. Think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Nobel Peace Prize in 1979) or Elinor Ostrom (Nobel in Economic Sciences in 2009). Each of their stories reveals the capacity to overcome adversity and extricate themselves from a sometimes suffocating environment and say “this is my vocation.” We also sense a deep-seated determination to improve the human condition, and a genuine curiosity for the world, nature and human relations.

To quote Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986, curiosity is the driving force of the world. A driving force that these Nobel winners have looked for and found by overcoming prejudice, disapproval and even more hateful obstacles such as racism; they then expressed this motivation through discoveries that changed the course of history. In the words of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, if your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough. All these women’s stories speak of dreams crowned with success, thanks to that very feminine ability to combine tenacity with curiosity, strength with hope, determination with kindness.

Devoid of prejudice, these women’s aptitude for meticulous analysis has benefited all areas of science and literature, with magnificent results. Let us wish that we can soon say the same for Fine Watchmaking.