The first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Economics was Elinor Ostrom. She achieved this historic milestone in 2009 for her groundbreaking work on the governance of common resources. Ostrom's research challenged traditional views on resource management, demonstrating that communities could self-organize effectively to manage shared resources without external intervention. Her pioneering approach has influenced numerous fields, including environmental policy and economics, highlighting the importance of localized solutions in addressing collective action problems.