2DkcTXceO

20“The whole women thing”Nancy M. ReidDepartment of Statistical SciencesUniversity of Toronto, Toronto, ONIt is an honor and a pleasure to contribute to this celebratory volume, and I amgrateful to the editors for their efforts. The temptation to discuss non-technicalaspects of our profession and discipline has caught me too, and I have, withsome trepidation, decided to look at the past, present and future of statisticalscience through a gender-biased lens. In the past fifty years, a great deal haschanged for the better, for the position of women in science and in statisticalscience, but I believe we still have some way to go.20.1 IntroductionThe title of this chapter is a quote, as I remember it, from a dear friendand colleague. The occasion was a short discussion we had while rushing inopposite directions to catch talks at a Joint Statistical Meeting, probably inthe early 1990s, and he asked me if I might consider being nominated to runfor election as President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).Iwascompletelysurprisedbythequestion,andmyimmediatereactionswereto be honored that we were discussing it, and to assume that the question wasrhetorical. He said no, this was within the realm of possibility, and I shouldgive it careful consideration, for all the reasons one might expect: an honorfor me, a chance to influence an organization I cared about, etc. He ended bysaying “plus, you know, there’s the whole women thing. I guess you’d be thefirst.” In fact, Elizabeth Scott was the first woman President of the IMS, in1978.For various reasons, a number of unconnected events recently got me thinkingabout “the whole women thing.” Despite many years of on-and-off thinkingabout issues surrounding gender and a professional career, I find I still havealotofquestionsandnotmanyanswers.Ihavenotraininginsocialscience,nor in womens’ studies, nor in psychology, and no experience of what217