Gender and Mathematics

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Mathematics is acknowledged as a hard subject. People who are good at it are considered to belong to a sort of elite. Usually to be “accepted” in this elite you have to fulfill some requirements and most of them are related with a specific gender. “Math is a God’s gift for boys.” This has been the perception of society for a long time. The majority thinks that the nature of mathematics goes along mostly with masculine attributes, thus, males are more focused on it. Therefore, according to these people boys by default get to be better in math, with girls being excluded from any kind of decent relation with this field of study. Even though this perception of boys being better in mathematics than the opposite gender is the opinion of majority, there are different opinions about this issue such as the other extreme that girls perform better in this field; and still there are people who believe that both genders have equal mathematical skills.

Firstly, because boys are more engaged with mathematics and sciences, most people think that their performance in this particular field is better than girls’. People who believe this to be true argue that the most brilliant minds of the all times and the most successful scientists are men. They even go further reminding the society that every concentration that is mathematics-related is overpopulated by representatives of male gender. In other words, boys are more likely to attend universities that are related with mathematics and sciences. For instance, if you walk by the Mathematics and Science Faculty in the University of Pristina you can come across mostly male students attending this faculty. Even more, if you go further and search for the academic staff in this institution, you can see ...

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