The Statistical Society of Canada fundraising committee and the Faculty of Science at Carleton University have contributed funds towards producing a poster highlighting firsts for women in statistics in Canada. The finished product will be an open-source poster highlighting removal of legislative barriers and firsts for women* in statistics in Canada, held under a Creative Commons licence, and compiled using LaTeX so that it can be freely distributed, modified, updated, and adapted.

For the summer of 2020, Marieta-Rita Osezua, was hired as a diversity journalist for the statistical sciences funded by the Faculty of Science at Carleton University. The original scope was to highlight progress in diversifying the profession of statistics. Over the course of the term, Marieta-Rita explored a variety of project directions before refining the scope to a more manageable project highlighting the removal of legislative barriers and celebrating firsts for women in statistics in Canada.

In fall 2021, the SSC fundraising committee committed to funding the next stage of the project. Carleton University student, Jeeheon Kim, is incorporating feedback from the first draft and we are now opening up the project to the wider community for feedback.

There are major challenges in taking on a diversity project. A project like this will necessarily be evolving, and despite best efforts and consultations, it is unlikely that all important names and events will be included. Consequently, we are seeking your help and feedback. Please let us know who and what events should be included (see below). We are particularly looking for help filling in gaps such as first faculty members hired at your institution, early CRCs, etc.

The final poster will be available in both official languages and freely available via GitHub under a Creative Commons licence so that it can be freely printed, updated, and modified to include regionally important events, names, milestones, or adaptations towards other diversity questions.

The current status of the project is only a draft of the content. The current style and format should be considered a minimally sufficient placeholder until the content is finalized. We have budgeted to improve the design once the content stabilizes. We are open to suggestions on the design, but this is a secondary goal at this time.

The poster draft is available here:

https://github.com/iamdavecampbell/Canadian_Women_in_Statistics/blob/main/poster.pdf

 

Please provide your feedback via this Google Form:

https://forms.gle/XDHrZ3J5qJ5Y1e7j8

Your contact information will only be used if we need additional clarification.

 

Dave Campbell

Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics and School of Computer Science, Carleton University

Assistant Director of Data Science Applications, Bank of Canada

 

*Notes on choice of women

Even though using a binary definition of gender is out of date, more general diversity was an initial direction of interest, but the journalistic complexity would have slowed the project considerably. The poster is meant to be adaptable and modifiable for future work, including to more general definitions of diversity. The project and its focus on women is largely motivated by excellent reads such as:

• Billard, L., & Kafadar, K. (2015). Women in statistics: Scientific contributions versus rewards. In W. Pearson, Jr., et al. (Eds.), Advancing women in science: An international perspective. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08629-3_7
• Thomson, M. (2014). Reflections on women in statistics in Canada. In X. Lin et al. (Eds.), Past, present, and future of statistical science. DOI 10.1201/b16720
• Stinnett, S. (1990). Women in statistics: Sesquicentennial activities. The American Statistician, 44(2), 74–80.