I hear, “I’m sooooo bad at math,” and then a clueless giggle.

I hear, “Go ask your father for help with that homework, you know I’m bad at math.”

I hear, “Haha, it’s girl math, lol.” 

     But all I see is girls digging themselves deeper and deeper into the hole that is male-dominated STEM fields. It’s 2026 – why are you acting like you’re Cady Heron from “Mean Girls?”

     As a girl who has grown up in high-level math classes, I have seen the power of being a girl who’s good at math. I see how others take me seriously for taking calculus classes and doing well in them.

     While I don’t condone equating math intelligence with intelligence, I also don’t condone assuming one is bad at math because of one’s gender, which, sadly, seems to be the current state of the world.

     I question how much harm is truly done when I see girls claim that they’re bad at math or participate in trends like “girl math” that ultimately discredit the intelligence of young girls.     

     This concept stems from how we grow up. Many children remember asking their dad for help with math homework.

     But why is it always the dad? 

     “My Dad always helped me with math. Not that my mom was bad at math, but it was always easier [for my dad to help me], and then my mom would always help me with English,” junior Bella Lockaby said.

     This stereotype is also prevalent in other aspects of our culture, including ‘80s movies where the math “nerd” is male and boys’ toys that are more focused on engineering and science. This way of growing up shows girls that they aren’t expected to be good at math, reinforced throughout their lives by men dominating math fields.

     One of Shorecrest’s most rigorous math courses AP Calculus BC, has seven girls and 10 boys, while AP Calculus AB, which covers less content over the year, has 11 girls and eight boys. This trend continues into college, where women are consistently less than 30% of the students getting a bachelor’s degree in math.

     I think that when women see how much of a minority they are in these areas, they subconsciously tell themselves that they must be “bad at math.” But then they grow up and subconsciously teach their daughters that girls are inherently bad at math, and the cycle continues.  

     “Have you heard the trend, ‘I want the confidence of a mediocre white man?’” US Math Teacher and Math Department Chair Jessica Thorn said. “I think that girls get down on themselves more when they’re weaker at something. And so, they can say that thing and joke about it to make them feel maybe a little better about it. But a boy just takes the ‘D’ and doesn’t take it personally.” 

     On the other hand, the same stereotype that says girls are bad at math says boys are bad at English. However, the difference is that one rarely hears boys talking about how bad they are at English. 

     All this comes down to the fact that no area of intelligence is attached to a gender. Girls are already told they are less smart than boys, and any reinforcement of this idea pushes women back even further.

     “I don’t think being bad at math is related to your gender because I know plenty of guys that don’t understand math the same amount as I know plenty of girls that don’t understand math,”  Lockaby said. “I feel like gender really doesn’t have anything to do with it. Just like how gender doesn’t have anything to do with English, either. There are great writers that are males, and also great writers that are females.”