Suffragette Statistics | Stats + Stories Episode 318 / by Stats Stories

Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas is a socio-economic statistician at Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) working in collaboration with researchers at the Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutions. She is an elected council member of the Royal Statistical Society and secretary of the History of Statistics Section, as well as a member of the Women Committee of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, and the Spanish Biostatistics Network (Biostatnet). She is passionate about uncovering the hidden stories of women in the history of statistics, and firmly believes in the need for a more equal, diverse and inclusive discipline.


Episode Description

The work of suffragettes in both the United Kingdom and the United States has been immortalized in textbooks, as well as in movies and TV. The women activists who helped women gain the right to vote are often portrayed as heroes and radicals. What's gotten less attention is the connection between the statistical world and the suffragette movement. That's the focus of a recent article in Chance magazine as well as an issue of Significance Magazine written and edited respectively by our guest Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas. 

+Full Transcript

Rosemary Pennington The work of suffragettes in both the United Kingdom and the United States has been immortalized in textbooks, as well as in movies and TV. The women activists who helped women gain the right to vote are often portrayed as heroes and radicals. What's gotten less attention is the connection between the statistical world and the suffragette movement. That's the focus of a recent article in Chance Magazine as well as an issue of Significance Magazine written and edited respectively by our guest Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas. Altea, thank you for being here.

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
Thank you both for having me. It's an honor to speak to you.

Rosemary Pennington How did you get interested in this, this connection between stats and suffrage?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Well, I first became connected to the wall of history of justice and history of women in the States through Florence Nightingale, because I just didn't feel represented in the field that I was studying. So I was always interested in seeing beyond the names and the theorems that we were studying. They all felt very far from my world. So I became interested in Florence Nightingale, which took me to the artist who says the bicentenary has come, meaty trying to organize the celebration to celebrate 200 years since her birth. And then through there, I started to study more women in the past of the discipline and trying to understand how they changed the stippling and how they advanced. And through this, we totally happened to coincide with my two maternity lips. Then I got to the work of the suffragists that were elected fellows of the society. And I was just very interested to see that there was so little, both on their work, but also on the suffrage movement, as a whole. So there was very little on the statistics around.

Rosemary Pennington So could you introduce us to Millicent Fawcett and Eleanor Florence Rathbone?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Absolutely. So these two women were the main representatives of the national unions of the Suffrage Movement, which was the organization that represented the suffragettes within the suffrage movement. And they were basically the political side of the suffrage movement. They weren't so involved in the fights that have been more represented in the history of the movement. They were more involved in the Attali making the connections through politics, but also through data to keep the movement going. And to be pragmatic about where they were trying to achieve one step at a time as much progress as possible. But yeah, as I said, it was probably the most pragmatic side of the movement, but they were both the leaders of the Union at different stages. So Eleanor Rathbone took the baton from Millicent. But they co-assisted through most of the fight, and they actually managed to see it succeed in 1920 while they were both living in and still working together,

Rosemary Pennington In reading through both the Chance piece and the Significance article, I was struck by this idea that women were considered an unknown quantity. And I wondered if you could sort of talk through exactly what people, mostly men, were suggesting when they were saying women were an unknown quantity, and sort of how these two figures might play out in that?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Yes, I actually love that concept that Millicent first coined herself as Sally. I think it was really reflective of the little data that they're wearing about women, not only on their political attitudes, but oh no, these fears really in the workplace, and there wasn't very much data on them. And therefore, both political parties, all the political parties fear that they wouldn't necessarily vote for them. So, so yeah, there was an unknown quantity, but also other things within the Royal Statistical Society recognize that, that there was not enough data. So, previews of famous names like Charles Booth have worked on trying to represent women in their social surveys of for instance, London or big cities. Also other statisticians like Elizabeth Hutchins have tried to represent the figures and the proportion of women in industry. So this has been worked out. He started before but it was very slowly going on. And some of the precedents including precedent deal of the society recognize that our own franchises statistics, there was very little information, very few facts and therefore, all the potential estimates or potential arguments people had for and against and against the women's both were completely unfounded.

John Bailer
You know, when I was reading your articles, I was struck by some of the policy work related to sue kind of the advocacy of equal pay and then also the initiation of a Family Allowances or child benefits. Could you talk a little bit about those two policies? And you know, when did this happen, you know, what years were these things occurring?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Yes, these are things that are very interesting, both policies on equal pay both women for certain Rathbone utterly didn't completely agree with were quite interesting. So, they both agreed they had to be changed, but firstly, it was more of the thought that the issue had to be with a lack of specialization of women. So they really try to proceed through that through trying to encourage more education for the women and thinking that was the way to achieve equal pay. And see in fact, he co-founded a new monk College in Cambridge in 1875. So this was worrying. On the other hand, Rathbone has a greater interest in reflecting the lack of wealth for women and their carrying responsibilities. So he thought to compensate women for the caring work that they were doing that wasn't being paid. And this was even more present during periods of war where women were at home, there was no money coming from the men's work, and women were completely empty handed. So that was her argument, pro equal pay. So they both really advocated not necessarily agreeing on the terms, but they really went for it. But Rathbone's fight for the benefit that you mentioned was a continuation of this fight for equal pay, really. And I actually thought this is very closer to my heart, because of course, I have this child care benefit that's here since in 1945, us as one of the first women to be MPs in the British Parliament at this time, it was then called family allowance but is now a still work in payment, the only universal payment in in UK and this is helping many families like mine to to deal with a cost of living crisis and so on. So I'm really very in depth with her. But yeah, see, they both had saved most of their fights before. Before that that's and so that was, we are all really, I'm particularly grateful to them. But I think we will all be very grateful for them for the massive work in regarding equal pay is of course, a more difficult thing to assess as to whether we've accepted yet to be honest.

Rosemary Pennington
So that's probably something to confirm. As you're talking it made me think of in the Significance article, you talk about this, this piece that was published, or was going to be published by a man called Are Women Lazy, where Rathbone is sort of saying I can't respond to this, because it's all of these generalizations about women. But some of what you know she's describing is the fact that women are doing this work, as you point out, like domestic work that's undervalued. And it makes me think of this conversation we are having now is still in this day about how do you quantify, in some way, the labor that goes into a home, right, whether it's a man or a woman staying home, there's still that conversation about there's a lot of labor that that a partner at home puts into sort of supporting a household that we still are, that doesn't count in the same ways that that work outside the home, it's kind of just sort of struck me that this is still a conversation that we're having 100 years later.

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
Absolutely, yes. And I feel not only that, but also the impact motherhood or parenthood has in women's careers particularly is completely forgotten in any estimations of pay or, or progress on and I know it's different in the US but in the UK, you can get extended parental leave and it's a very common thing to do so in the case of my two children have had over a year of parental leave and therefore of course my survey has been seriously affected by these gaps. And how would you estimate the effect on this career out of all the missed opportunities it's very difficult to estimate up in preseason is nothing is not a simple task to to account for these things. But more work needs to be done both on accounting for the carrying responsibilities and the impact on our careers.

John Bailer
I completely agree. You're listening to Stats and Stories, and today we're talking with Altea Lorenzo-Arribas about suffragettes statistics and women in stats. Another thing that struck me as I was reading your article was with the US Census coming out as an important part of the story and how the census was leading in some of its hiring practices and its workforce. Could you tell the listeners a little bit about that?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Yes. I wasn't completely surprised when I found it because I had already seen a lot of the work that the Census Bureau had done on databases, for instance, with a Marie Eleanor speaker who works at the census on labor statistics and other things. So it's, I've always found this is a pioneer in institutions in the US, but yeah, it was great to find that information to find that they were definitely ahead of the curve. And in 1880, they were already hiring women as professional enumerators gathering data for the census, and also how later on in 1919, they were already 50% of their workers of the employees were women. So yeah, it was fascinating to see how from the actual census as well as providing, I suppose, data for the actual suffragettes to go ahead, they were employing these women, and some of them were asked if suffragettes and suffragists and suffragette, so yeah, I was very glad to find the stories of their through Darden and Emily Farnum and how they became professionals within the Census Bureau, but as I say, also managed to fight in the in during the soft rates, the suffragette club, particularly in the case of Darden, particularly interested in that see work as an enumerator first, but then See, suppose the Iowa State Bar in 1918, and then pass to do another, a more professional year, pass as a lawyer, focusing on women's legal rights and joining this, what was called the color women's suffrage club. But of course, the thing that is important to notice here is that while white women achieved the women's vote in 1919, in the US with the 19th Amendment, but African American women will take much longer, it was only until 1965, that they were allowed to vote. So the role of women was extremely important and must be celebrated. But again, foreigner with more of a statistical background, her work as well was really commendable. And so, so all these women from within the establishment and from within the statistics, Professor on manage to advance and support the movement or was, while we happily are able to do now it is both.

John Bailer
The other surprise for me was the state where I live and Rosemary lives being mentioned so prominently so Ohio is where we were located. And now I am reading about Cuyahoga County, which is the northern part of the state where we live. But then reading about there's this connection between suffrage and prohibition. And that was, that was a completely no way kind of experience for me. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting the assumptions people were making about women, and why we shouldn't give women the right to vote because they will not let us do the things we want to do. I thought that was really striking in this trance piece, it stuck out to me. Yeah. So could you flesh that out a little bit for us?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I must say, I don't know much about the state or the county. So it's difficult for me to understand whether this was a specific thing to the state or it was a thought that was more generically spread around the US. But yes, I thought this paper on the correlation between prohibition of alcohol and women's suffrage was very strange and potentially a very clear example of a spurious correlation. It's just difficult for me to assess what were the other variables that we're planning to find in those correlations. But in authority, it was a real shame that the study did continue, or it was expanded to other states to see which factors were playing in there, but they're certainly fascinating and really crazy, but it gives you an idea of how unknown women were and how these assumptions were made. As you said without real facts or knowledge just based on associations or met opinions really, very often. Yeah, I thought it was striking that the Ohio campaigner had to come out and say, we just want you to know that women's suffrage is not about temperance, right. Like, I thought that it was striking that they felt compelled that they had to go out and make that statement, given sort of what this suggested day I can't imagine how loud this thing was being promoted. I guess it was an easy way to try and fight the suffrage movement, it was an easy way to convince people that they were a bad thing, but by the absolutely appalling and very fascinating facts, which would have been interesting to study more.

John Bailer So you know, one of the articles you wrote there, and the quote was, that struck me was the suffrage movement itself was no stranger to scientific inquiry. And I was thinking about that. Wow, I, you know, I wasn't thinking about what kind of data was being pulled into this and trying to continue, kind of, to push this forward. Could you kind of break that down a bit?

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Yes. So for me, I have already seen banners about the suffrage movement, at least in the UK, using their demonstrations, I've seen some of the Florence Nightingale banners and the Mary Somerville, so I knew the celebrated women's scientists. But what I didn't know before this research is to what extent they were involved in the science, to what extent they had this analytical minds that really drove them to look into the data, and to perhaps not necessarily develop methods back clearly, critically, looking at the data and assessing what was missing what was needed and what was going to hurt the movement. And this was present across the movement and really materializing these union leaders. But they weren't the only once and it was widespread, clear, not only just a political and not smooth member, a massive scientific component to it as well, that was a materialized and reflected on this bonus, but cut a lot of work been done on economical journals on political urinals and lots of them looking at the stats, suddenly, the RSS Yanase doesn't necessarily reflect some of the work. But as I said, the work was being done. It was clearly analytical and quantitative. In many cases, it's really interesting, because I keep thinking back to that media representation of suffragettes, right, whether it's on Downton Abbey, or there was the movie that had Meryl Streep like, and it's always like, you know, women rushing to the streets, or fighting with their families about whether they can go out and be in the marches, and sometimes engage in like, physical violence to sort of fight for it. And yet there is this sort of this other story that has been so less covered about sort of all this other stuff that was happening to help propel this movement.

Rosemary Pennington
And it's just striking to me that all of this hard work sort of gets overshadowed by the spectacle of the movement for the women's vote. Yeah. So yeah, I agree. It was clearly politicized. And I don't necessarily argue that part of that more physical fibers and needing there was so obviously something needed to call the attention of people. But yes, I agree that this political aspect and analytical aspect and a more quieter, calmer movement was was essential to it, and was the pragmatism of this movement that I will argue, ultimately achieve the goal of getting the boat so it is surprising to me as well, that the more radicalize four, three of the woman is the one that has made all the stories. You know, you've spent, in these articles, this reflection on history, this thinking about where we started, and where we've come to in terms of suffrage and related topics, you hinted at the idea of kind of current and future work that might be needed, and particularly the idea of kind of more investigation in terms of compensation for contribution, you know, sort of equal pay is investigated more deeply, what do you also see as maybe future challenges that are associated with this topic, I guess in general, associated with the topic of equality, diversity and inclusion, there is a within the field of statistics, there are clear gaps in the representation in the celebration and in the awards that that are given.

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
This is still a huge gap in this making the discipline more representative, as US statisticians will know about issues of representation and the biases they can drive to. So I guess, for me, with the issue of representativeness, to be able to properly address the issues that this society has, we need to have enough data but also that there's specific data that is looking at the specific problems that people have. And for that, we need to understand the population. So why not just think that it needs a majority. So it's always an issue of representativeness. For me looking at equalities is from that perspective, just being able to represent and not leaving any unknown quantities behind.

John Bailer
I'll tell you, thank you so much for being here today.

Altea Lorenzo-Arribas Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

John Bailer Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.