Suffrage, Statistics, and Spurious Correlations

Abstract

A few enlightened statistical minds played an important but largely unrecognized role in achieving the women’s universal suffrage worldwide, and overall, the role of statistics itself in the achievement has been under reported. While the socio-economic context of the UK and the US was notably different, in both countries the suffrage movement succeeded almost simultaneously. This was an accomplishment achieved after many years of steady campaigning alongside other social movements and by often highly educated women and their allies.