ABSTRACT
Few people working in any field of education have not heard of the problem of girls and mathematics; yet one could argue that the problem is of recent origin. Until about two decades ago the lower participation and achievement in mathematics of girls than boys was regarded as natural and normal, almost certainly genetically determined and neither a problem for girls nor for society. While there are still those who believe it to be ‘in the nature of things’ that girls should be ‘less mathematically inclined’ than boys, on the whole the situation today is different from twenty years ago. Schools Commission Projects of National Significance are devoted to overcoming the ‘problem’ which, depending upon one’s perspective, is either that girls do not share equally in the bounty that is to be had by those who are mathematically ‘well prepared’ or that girls provide relatively low ‘mathematical yield’ to the nation.
