Many girls, thinking that they will major in math, arrive at college, encounter an extremely difficult course, have second thoughts, and then end up with a different major. As one student tutor explained, in his experience, girls are much more likely to act helpless in help sessions. They get more frustrated and expect more work to be done for them by tutors than men.

This problem could stem from an idea that prevails in high school and even earlier: believing that "not many girls have the head" for math, teachers may go easier on them or hold their hands more than men while working on difficult math. This subtle tendency for coddling girls in math classes, based on the belief that girls inherently need the help more, can become hugely detrimental when it comes to college. When encountering truly challenging material for the first time in their lives and being expected to work through it independently, many girls may believe that they just can't hack it.

As Lillian Pierce, a PhD candidate in Princeton's math department, said, "People just don't believe you do what you do, and that can seem like a criticism once it happens enough times." If the assumption is made again and again that a girl won't be able to work on her own, eventually it could be a very bleak, self-fulfilling prophesy. We expect our high schools to foster a sense of self-reliance and an ability to learn on one's own, but insidious beliefs that are still drifting on a deep, nearly subconscious level in teachers could be undermining our expectations.

Now, combine this with the recent trend in scientific studies that seeks to prove the biological brain differences between men and women. At the same time as study after study is using DNA and brain chemistry to prove the illusion of race as a biological concept, many scientific studies are welcoming biological differences between the sexes-- from visual ranges to senses of smell to the locations where verbal information is processed in the brain. When taken out of context, these differences are often being wrongly used to support stereotypes about the sexes.

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