The 55th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) will be held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 3 to 13 July 2014.
The IMO is a problem-solving contest for high school students, held in a different country in July every year. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959, with seven countries taking part. Today, more than 100 countries take part, representing over 90% of the world’s population. The IMO is the oldest, biggest and most prestigious of all the international science Olympiads.
The six South African IMO contestants are all boys, and this is not unusual. Only 10% of all contestants are girls.
A more staggering statistic is that there is not a single girl in any of the teams which finished in the top 5 in 2013: China, Korea, USA, Russia, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The 2014 IMO is presented by the South African Mathematics Foundation and will take place at the University of Cape Town. The event is endorsed by the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Science and Technology of the Republic of South Africa.
Interestingly, this cross-section of scholars shows a clear distinction between the performance of different genders, races, and nationalities.