Women Flocking to Statistics

With all the attention number crunchers are getting lately, this Washington Post article delves into the diversity statistics of a few STEM fields, and found that, surprisingly, Statistics stands above the pack: women earn 40% of statistics degrees, and represent 40% of statistics faculty poised for tenured positions. Women receive only 18% of earned computer science degrees, and represent only 11% of math faculty.

The Big Data fields could certainly benefit from a stronger female presence, and it is widely quoted that women represent 25% of STEM fields as a whole. For example, the Burtch Works Study (Sept. 2014) shows that only 26% of the overall analytics workforce is female, and our data science study (April 2014) found that only 12% of data scientists are women.

Hopefully things will continue to improve with Statistics leading by example!