I must apologize for this slide with its dense text, but this is the beginning of an article from Time Magazine, and it is fantastic. I love this quote about why girls, starting in high school, start to do less and less in math and science than boys:
High school coincides with the onset of puberty, when girls become more interested in boys than in building skills like math.
As if high school boys are these bastions of academic focus or something. I remember having a hard time concentrating in algebra class, especially when discussing paired parabolas.
But this article does suggest that we have some social stigmas that our society must address. This article was written almost 30 years ago, and the people and ideas this article described began an effort to figure out how we can overcome these stigmas.
Additional Notes
The gap in school math scores between girls and boys has been shrinking.A recent study says that there is no gap. However, this hasn't translated to girls actually getting degrees in the “hard sciences”.