Grades of men and women in 1st-year mathematics courses were obtained from a sample of 9 universities. In addition, placement test scores were available from 4 of the institutions. This information was combined with Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and self-reported information on mathematics courses taken in high school, grades in those courses, and overall high school grade point average. College courses were divided into three categories (algebra, precalculus, and calculus). Within a given college mathematics course, the average grades of women were about equal to or slightly higher than men's average grades, but men's average scores on the mathematical scale of the SAT were above women's average scores by a third of a standard deviation or more.

From the article: Girls tend to have more negative math attitudes, including gender stereotypes, anxieties, and self-concepts, than boys. These attitudes play a critical role in math performance, math course-taking, and the pursuit of math-related career paths. We review existing research, primarily from U.S. samples, showing that parents’ and teachers’ expectancies for children’s math competence are often gender-biased and can influence children’s math attitudes and performance. We then propose three new directions for future research on the social transmission of gender-related math attitudes. First, parents’ and teachers’ own math anxieties and their beliefs about whether math ability is a stable trait may prove to be significant influences on children’s math attitudes. Second, a developmental perspective that investigates math attitudes at younger ages and in relation to other aspects of gender development, such as gender rigidity, may yield new insights into the development of math attitudes. Third, investigating the specific behaviors and mannerisms that form the causal links between parents’ and teachers’ beliefs and children’s math attitudes may lead to effective interventions to improve children’s math attitudes from a young age. Such work will not only further our understanding of the relations between attitudes and performance, but will lead to the development of practical interventions for the home and classroom that ensure that all students are provided with opportunities to excel in math.

From the article:The threat of being negatively stereotyped in math impairs performance of highly qualified females on difficult math tests, a phenomenon known as “stereotype threat” −ST. Perhaps more alarmingly, recent studies based on unselective samples of elementary-, middle-, and high-school students show that ST also operates in girls from the general population. Here we offer first evidence that ST does operate (with large effect sizes) even in middle-school girls who deny the negative gender stereotype. Children’s beliefs about the two genders math ability, therefore, do not necessarily moderate their susceptibility to ST, an important issue that remained unclear so far. This new finding is also of great practical significance: School girls’ counter-stereotypic beliefs cannot be taken as sufficient evidence for deciding whether the struggle against ST is or is not needed. Appropriate interventions should be the default option when aiming for true gender equality in math and science achievements.

This report is based on data from 10 states on the cognitive performance of students in grades 2 - 11. The data shows only trivial differences in math due to gender and this is true even in the high school years.

From the article: A model linking children's perceptions of adults' gender stereotypes about mathematics and science ability, children's stereotypes, and children's perceptions of their own mathematics and science competence was tested in 302 fourth, sixth, and eighth graders. When boys believed that adults hold more traditional stereotypes, they tended to hold corresponding beliefs that girls are relatively less capable or that boys are more capable in mathematics and science. These groups competence ratings, in turn, were related to self-perceptions of avidity for sixth- and eight-grade boys. In contrast, paths paths were nonsignificant for girls. The results provided support for both social status theory and experiential theory. We discuss implication regarding the influence of stereotypes on motivation and identity development.

In this article, the authors use meta-analysis to analyze gender differences in recent studies of mathematics performance. First, they meta-analyzed data from 242 studies published between 1990 and 2007, representing the testing of 1,286,350 people. Overall, d = 0.05, indicating no gender difference, and variance ratio = 1.08, indicating nearly equal male and female variances. Second, they analyzed data from large data sets based on probability sampling of U.S. adolescents over the past 20 years: the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Effect sizes for the gender difference ranged between −0.15 and +0.22. Variance ratios ranged from 0.88 to 1.34. Taken together, these findings support the view that males and females perform similarly in mathematics.

From the article: The negative reputation of women in mathematics and its consequences on their self-perceptions have been extensively demonstrated. However, in France and other countries, the younger the students, the less pronounced these gender differences are. The focus of this study was to explore whether children of two age groups (fourth graders and seventh graders) are aware of a math-ability gender stereotype favorable to boys, and to determine their personal beliefs on mathematics ability. The link between this gender stereotype and self-perceptions was also examined. As expected, there was not a clear-cut awareness of a math-ability gender stereotype favorable to boys. More surprising, girls in both age groups and seventh-grade boys believed that girls do better than boys. Moreover, when their gender identity was made salient, the boys who believed in girl superiority perceived their own performance in mathematics as lower. The girls, on the other hand, regardless of their age and stereotype awareness or personal beliefs, perceived their performance in math as higher when their gender identity was made salient than when it was not.

From the article: Many models assume that habitual human behavior is rather guided by spontaneous, automatic, or implicit processes than by deliberate, rule-based, or explicit processes. Thus, math ability self-concepts and math performance could be related to implicit math-gender stereotypes, in addition to explicit stereotypes. Two studies assessed at what age implicit math-gender stereotyping can be observed and what the relations between these stereotypes and math-related outcomes are in children and adolescents. Implicit math-gender stereotypes could be detected with Implicit Association Tests (IATs) already among 9-year-old girls. Adolescent girls showed stronger implicit gender stereotypes than adolescent boys, who, on average, did not reveal implicit gender-stereotypic associations. Girls also showed an implicit affinity to language versus math already at the age of 9. In a regression analysis, implicit math-gender stereotypes predicted academic self-concepts, academic achievement, and enrollment preferences above and beyond explicit math-gender stereotypes for girls, but (with the exception of achievement) not for boys. These findings suggest implicit gender stereotypes are an important factor in the dropout of females from math-intensive fields.

Previous research suggests that, while gender differences on standardized tests among high school-aged students have diminished, they persist among academically gifted students. This study examined patterns of gender differences for younger, elementary school-aged gifted students. Results showed that, on an off-level achievement test, males outperformed females in mathematics beginning in grade 3, although effect sizes were small. The ratio of males to females achieving very high scores on the mathematics subtest was 2:1, but this difference was only significant among 5th and 6th graders. Both males and females had a preference for mathematics over other subjects. More girls perceived their academic strengths to be in verbal areas, while most boys perceived theirs to be in mathematics and science. Girls' and boys' perceptions of their academic strengths corresponded to their actual performance on the off-level test. Tested abilities also corresponded to students' choice of easiest and most challenging subject.

The research described in this article examined gender differences between high-achieving students in math and science with respect to their achievement, self-concept, locus of control, number of math and science courses taken, and the important people who contributed to their decisions to enroll in advanced courses in high school. The study utilized data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88; National Center for Education Statistics, 1994), with two subsamples selected that represent the highest achieving students in math and in science. The results of this study indicated that there were more males than females in both subsamples of high-achieving students in math and science. The results also suggested that the best predictor for distinguishing between mathematically high-achieving males and females was locus of control. High-achieving males had both higher self-concept and higher standardized math test scores than high-achieving females.

This study examined how mathematical experiences influence Dutch pupils' course enrollment in mathematics. Are gender differences in extracurricular, mathematics-related activities related to achievements in or attitudes towards mathematics, and consequently to differences between girls and boys in the selection of mathematics for their final examination curriculum? In total, 213 Dutch secondary education pupils (i.e., 139 females and 74 males) between the ages of 14 and 15 participated in this study. The frequency of their participation in 60 mathematics-related activities, their intelligence and attitudes toward mathematics were registered. In addition, the achievement grades in mathematics were obtained. The results revealed that extracurricular activities were related to achievement grades rather than to attitudes toward mathematics. Intellectual capacities, achievements, and feelings of adequacy in mathematics, rather than mathematics-related activities, discriminated between the pupils who selected or did not select mathematics for their final examination curriculum. No gender differences could be demonstrated in achievement grades for mathematics, nor in attitudes toward mathematics. These findings suggest that for Dutch secondary education students mathematics-related activities were stimulating, but not decisive for their choice of mathematics in their final examination curriculum.

From the article: Previous research on stereotype threat in children suggests that making gender identity salient disrupts girls’ math performance at as early as 5 to 7 years of age. The present study (n = 124) tested the hypothesis that parents’ endorsement of gender stereotypes about math moderates girls’ susceptibility to stereotype threat. Results confirmed that stereotype threat impaired girls’ performance on math tasks among students from kindergarten through 2nd grade. Moreover, mothers’ but not fathers’ endorsement of gender stereotypes about math moderated girls’ vulnerability to stereotype threat: Performance of girls whose mothers strongly rejected the gender stereotype about math did not decrease under stereotype threat. These findings are important because they point to the role of mothers’ beliefs in the development of girls’ vulnerability to the negative effects of gender stereotypes about math.