- Over the past two millennia, men have led the western world in politics, religion and education. In many cases, men have used this power to exclude women from those fields. For example, Aristotle, the eminent ancient Greek philosopher, envisioned a world in which men would be educated for civic life and women would learn to be successful homemakers. As recently as 1873, Dr. Edward Clarke of Harvard argued that schools should bar women from higher education on the grounds that studying too hard would render women infertile.
- If girls and boys demonstrate no statistically significant difference in math scores, why does the negative stereotype of girls and math persist? The answer lies in history. Jeanna Bryner of "Live Science" says that in the 1950s, women earned only 5 percent of doctorates awarded in the mathematical sciences. David R. Francis of the National Bureau of Economic Research points out that American culture at that time expected women to be homemakers and, if they attended college, to major in female-dominated fields like teaching or social work. The dearth of women in mathematics may have led generations of Americans to believe that women were simply incapable of such work. Furthermore, the lack of female role models for aspiring female mathematicians likely perpetuated the cycle, steering women into fields perceived as more female friendly.
- In 2008, a study conducted by the National Science Foundation and published in "Science" cataloged student scores from various state standardized tests. The researchers discovered that girls and boys performed equally on every measure. The researchers also analyzed the persistent gender gap between boys and girls on the mathematics portion of the SAT. Since more girls than boys aspire to college, more girls take the test, including lower-achieving girls who bring down the average for all girls; however, women now earn 30 percent of all doctorates awarded in the mathematical sciences, and girls in high school take challenging math courses at the same rate as boys.
- Research demonstrates that girls have a neurological advantage when it comes to verbal skills, but boys are superior in spatial memory. Based on this research, Dr. Abigail James suggests that "girls will begin with words" but boys learn better through a visual or hands-on approach. Dr. Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., agrees, arguing that putting information in a verbal context like a word problem benefits female students, but often frustrates boys, who prefer to deal with pure math.