Women in Photography: Luminous Endowment Winners

I make a point of looking over each group of Luminous Endowment winners when they are announced, taking some time with the pictures, maybe doing a little further research, and so on. To my eye, the caliber of work has been steadily rising, which has been a lot of fun to watch.
Something else caught my eye in the most recent set of winners, though. Of the ten awards, eight of them were given to women.
My first thought was that perhaps in this cycle there had been a special appeal to women. Or perhaps there had been some behind the scenes shenanigans. I could find no hint of either, and the work was excellent. Nobody was sand-bagging to beef up the female side of the roster. As part of my research, later, I learned that the applicant pool included 57 women which, while not the 80% figure represented in the grantees, was still a lot.
Dam Birds Collaborate? Photo by Paula Van Every, used with permission.
Throughout history, women have always been represented in the field of photography. Th...