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Publishing in the prestigious journals is impossible without political connections and when prizes are awarded for work that was done by many people, the one who gets the money is usually chosen politically. Usually even getting into a position where you might generate a result deserving of being in a great journal means you already made those political connections. However, it's just the same political bullshit about who gets post docs and professorships.
When I was doing my PhD at Georgia Tech, in my first year the faculty was about 100% white men. There was a Brazilian and a couple of Chinese, one of which was a woman. The faulty that got hired during my four years there were two women, a Thai, two latins, and one white man. I don't think the statistics that had led to the ~100% white man faculty suddenly changed so that 2008-2011 all the best qualified applicants had superficial appearance statistics which suddenly diverged from the previous trend. The same thing that got those women hired is what controls who gets to publish in the great journals and who gets the good post docs.
