Girls Are Rare At The International Math Olympiad

Photo: Leah Libresco

Leah Libresco, FiveThirtyEight’s news writer reports, "The six members of the U.S. team that won this year’s International Math Olympiad (IMO) last week were all boys. And that’s no fluke. Since the U.S. began participating in the competition in 1974, 88 percent of its teams have been entirely male."

Photo: FiveThirtyEight

 
That places the U.S. among the 15 nations most likely to bring all-male squads to the IMO, an annual competition for high school students from around the world.¹ Azerbaijan, North Korea and Tajikistan are the only countries that have never had a girl on their IMO teams. But for many other countries, female competitors are very rare.<sup>2

In recent years, girls have been a larger share of all IMO teams; the average number of girls per team has risen from 0.2 in the 1970s to 0.5 in the 2010s (so far).</sup>
Read more...

Source: FiveThirtyEight