--- a/pandas/io/tests/test_stata.py
+++ b/pandas/io/tests/test_stata.py
@@ -23,6 +23,10 @@ from pandas.tslib import NaT
 from pandas.types.common import is_categorical_dtype
 
 
+from pandas.compat import is_platform_little_endian
+if not is_platform_little_endian():
+    raise nose.SkipTest("known failure of test_stata on non-little endian")
+
 class TestStata(tm.TestCase):
 
     def setUp(self):
