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SEND INORMATION BY E-MAIL TO MARY REGIER (mhr@po.cwru.edu).
- (June 2001) The latest issue of the Statistical Education Research Newsletter rounds up the debate about priority research questions in statistical education. It also raises the question of students' attitudes and feelings in learning Statistics and provides a bibliography on Emotional Mathematics that can be of help to researchers in statistical education.
- (June 2001) "Women and Men in Europe and North America" is a recent United Nations publication that provides information on the economic, political and social differences which separate men and women. It contains 54 country profiles that reveal gender inequalities in different countries of the region.
- (March 2001) A book in Spanish by Carmen Batanero (Carmen.Batanero@ugr.es), prepared for use in a course on "Didactics in Statistics" at the University of Granada, Spain, can be downloaded from the web under the heading: Batanero, C. (2001). Didactica de la Estadistica . The course is offered in the final year for majors in Statistical Sciences and Techniques at that university.
- (February 2001) An award in honor of Florence N. David (1909-1993) was approved by the Council of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) in the USA last summer. It will be awarded for the first time this year, according to the latest newsletter of the Caucus for Women in Statistics whose proposal led to the establishment of this award. The F N David Award will be granted to a female statistician "who serves as a role model to other women by her contributions to the profession through excellence in research, leadership of multidisciplinary collaborative groups, statistics education, or service to the professional societies." Documented nominations may be submitted to Caucus president Nancy Allen (nallen@ets.org) at O2-T, Educational Testing Service, Rosedale Road, Princeton, NJ 08541-0001.
- (January 2001) The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Program on Europe and Central Asia, International Division, has announced a "Women's International Science Collaboration Program 2001-2002". The grant is for US citizens or permanent residents who plan to establish research partnerships with colleagues in Central/Eastern Europe and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. For more details, contact Karen Grill (kgrill@aaas.org). Deadlines for receipt of the completed applications are March 15 and July 15, 2001, and January 15, 2002.
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(January 2001) The Statistical Education Research Newsletter, which is published three times a year, is starting its second year with a debate about research questions in statistical education. The current issue carries reactions by 12 statistics educators to a previous article pointing to priority areas in research, and response to these reactions will appear in the next issue.
- (October 2000) Women graduate students from countries outside the United States can apply for a $16,860 fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation for study or research in the United States. International Fellowships are available to women who are not American citizens or permanent residents. Of the 47 fellowships awarded, 6 are available to members of the International Federation of University Women for graduate study in a country other than their own. The Foundation also awards several annual Home Country Project grants which support community-based projects designed to improve the lives of women and girls in a fellow's home country. More information is available on the the AAUW website, where an application form can be downloaded.
- (October 2000) Travel grants for women researchers in the USA, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Association for Women in Mathematics, are awarded three times a year with applications due February 1, May 1, and October 1. The objective of this Grants Program is to enable women to attend research conferences in their fields, which include certain areas of Statistics but excludes most Mathematics Education and History of Mathematics. More information can be obtained from the Association for Women in Mathematics by e-mail.
- (October 2000) The third issue of the Statistical Education Research Newsletter, dated September 2000, contains reports on the IASE Round Table Conference on Training Researchers in the Use of Statistics, which took place in Tokyo, Japan, in August, and on several forthcoming activities concerning research in statistical education.
- (October 2000) The recently upgraded Women and Science website contains extensive information about "Gender Sensitive Indicators". Research on this subject is being carried out at the Women and Science sector of the European Commission Directorate General for Research.
- (October 2000) Participation by women at the conference on "Statistics, Development and Human Rights", which was held in Montreux, Switzerland, in early September, was notably higher than is generally seen at such meetings - thanks to deliberate planning by the conference's Scientific Committee, of whom CWS member Denise Lievesley was a member. Women gave 43% of the keynote/introductory/concluding addresses, constituted 26% of discussants, 23% of chairs, and 19% of the speakers. CWS chair Beverley Carlson presented an invited paper on "Women in Statistics: Where are We" which is referenced on the 1999-2000 ACTIVITIES page of this website.
- (May 2000) The International Statistical Institute (ISI) has established a special 2-year fund, the ISI Development Fund , for the purpose of assisting statisticians from developing countries in attending an ISI Session, an ISI conference, or a meeting of any ISI Section. Assistance is intended primarily for candidates in the early stages of their career or women re-entering the statistical field. Full details are given in an announcement on the ISI web site.
- (May 2000) An article in the Spring 2000 newsletter of the Caucus for Women in Statistics by Mari Palta looks at women's authorship in statistical journals and concludes that, on the whole, women are underrepresented as authors in some of the leading statistical journals - even relative to their underrepresentation as members in the American Statistical Association. The author of the article cautions that, because it was not always possible to determine a person's gender from the name as it appeared in the journal, the percentages based on such a count may be subject to some error.
- (May 2000) A conference on
"Women and Science: making change happen" was held on 3-4 April, 2000,
in Brussels, Belgium. According to a communication from Brigitte Degen
(Brigitte.DEGEN@cec.eu.int), who is in charge of the
statistics/indicator dossier of the Women and Science sector of the
European Commission Directorate General for Research, the conference
was based on the report, "Science Policies in the European Union:
promoting excellence through mainstreaming gender equality". The
report deals with the underrepresentation of women in European
scietific research - its challenges, measures used to assess the
problem and appropriate actions that need to be taken. CWS member
Denise Lievesley, director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics,
presented a paper on the role of women in the Statistics profession
and the representation of women through the statistics collected.
More information on the conference is available on the Women and
Science web site . On May 20, the EC Research Council adopted a
resolution on "Women and Science". The resolution invites member
states "to contribute to the common effort of improving statistics on
the participation of women in research, to encourage in the dialogue
proposed by the Commission on the different policies implemented in
member states, and to pursue the objective of gender equality in
science through national policies."
- (April 2000) The International Statistical Institute
(ISI), where women currently constitute only 9.5% of the membership
(191 out of the 2011 members), has been welcoming more women members
into its ranks in recent years. Figures for the last five years,
supplied by the ISI office, are:-
| Year |
Total Number Elected | Number of Women Elected |
% |
| 1995 | 150 | 22 | 15 |
| 1996 | 105 | 12 | 11 |
| 1997 | 78 | 12 | 15 |
| 1998 | 73 | 12 | 16 |
| 1999 | 83 | 14 | 17 |
- (January 2000) The latest newsletter of the Caucus for Women in
Statistics carries an article by Lynn Friedman in which she presents
data extracted from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics.
The data is summarized in a table giving the number of Ph.D. degrees
in Mathematics granted to men and women over a number of consecutive
years, through 1995-96. As might be expected, the percentage of Math
Ph.D.'s granted to women shows an incremental trend, with some
fluctuations. However, for the last five years represented in the
table, the percentages are only in the 20-24 percent range.
- (January 2000) Rosa Giaimo
(giaimo@unipa.it), professor of Statistics at the University of
Palermo, Italy, is the author of a recently published book in
Italian, Donne in Europa , which contains a lot of data
about the situation of women in Europe. The book covers: demographic changes in the population, socio-cultural changes, the reduction in fertility, the move towards equality in education and women's participation in politics. The book also includes two chapters on women in the workforce contributed by Claudia Mileo.
- (January 2000)
The IASE Statistical Education Research Group is the new name for what
was previously known as the "International Study Group for Research on
Learning Probability and Statistics" and which first convened in 1982.
This is a special interest group within the IASE ( International Association for
Statistical Education) , which is also open to all who are
interested in carrying out research on the process of teaching and
learning Statistics. The first issue of the group's newsletter,
edited by Carmen Batanero (batanero@goliat.ugr.es)
with Gabriella Ottaviani and John Truran as Associate Editors,
is dated January 2000.
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Martha Aliaga (aliaga@umich.edu) has sent in a report about the 4th Latin American
Congress of Statistical Societies, which was held in Mendoza,
Argentina, in July of 1999. In addition to nationals of Latin
American countries, there were participants from four European
countries, as well as from the USA. Participation by women was
substantial in all aspects of the conference. In 62 of the 112 papers
presented, a woman was the principal author.
- The Committee
on Women in Statistics of the
American Statistical Association (COWIS) has reported an increase
in the number of women participating in technical sessions at the 1998
Joint Statistical Meetings, in comparison with the number who
participated in 1996 and 1997. Overall, women's participation has been
about 18 percent of attendance at the meetings. In 1998, 26.6 percent
of the Association's members were women.
- The Caucus for Women in Statistics ,
a North American group of about 350 members, is an independent
organization with strong links to the Committee on Women in Statistics
of the American Statistical Association and shares its aims of
promoting the role of women in statistics. Caucus members usually
hold receptions and round table meetings, as well as technical
sessions, at the annual Joint Statistical Meetings in North America.
Quarterly newsletters carry reports on activities and information
about job openings and other matters of interest to members.
- The International Women's Network (IWN) is a Prague-based organization, founded in 1996, with Czech and non-Czech women members who are highly visible in their professions. The organization holds monthly meetings and social activities and runs a number of projects "connected to the full use of women's potential and to international networking of professionals". Discussions are held in English and Czech, with simultaneous translation. Men are invited to join as Associate Members. For further information, contact IWN's founder and executive director, Jana Outrata (IWN@MBOX.VOL.CZ).
- The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), which was founded in 1971, has over 4000 women and men members worldwide. The association issues bi-monthly newsletters, and its programs include lectures, workshops, travel grants and mentoring.
- The Center for Women and Information Technology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County was established in 1998 to "address and rectify women's under-representation in Information Technology" and to encourage research on the relationship between Information Technology and gender. Links to about 80 women-related sites in science, mathematics and technology, are listed. For more information, contact the Center's director, Joan Korenman (korenman@umbc.edu).
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