In middle school and high school, the guys were seen as the nerdy ones for being good at math, says senior math major Seth Anderson. For girls, it wasn’t as common.

Even in college, Anderson’s math classes are dominated by men. In a class of around 20 students, there are usually only two or three girls.

“To be honest, I don’t know why that is,” Anderson said.

That has become a societal perception: boys do math, and girls stick with liberal arts.

But according to Michael Schwalbe, a professor of sociology and anthropology, that isn’t always the case.

“The overwhelming finding of 50 years of research on gender differences in cognitive abilities is that the differences within gender groups are greater than the differences between gender groups,” Schwalbe said.

“Which leads me to wonder what motivates the continuing search for differences in cognitive ability between women and men.”

Opinions differed in the 1990s. A study done by Doris Entwisle, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, along with several other JHU researchers found that there was indeed a gender gap between males and females in secondary schools that favored males using higher level math skills. But they did note that the gender gap was shrinking.

Now, those studying education and who plan on going into the teaching business are seeing new things.

Anna Compton, a senior in middle school education, is student teaching this summer and has found differences in the ways females and males learn math.

“At the middle school level, girls seem to be more conscientious of their grades,” Compton said. “Girls tend to show their math work more, while boys work more of it out in their heads. So they both do things to make them look different, but in the end, the grades are pretty much the same.”

Schwalbe said the differences start at the secondary school level as students are sorted out.

“The weight of the research evidence shows that gender differences in math abilities, as measured by standardized tests, begin to appear in late adolescence, as girls and boys are channeled into different kinds of coursework and as girls encounter subtle, discouraging sexism in their math and science courses,” he said.

Anderson said he believes the gap evens out a lot more in college because it becomes more socially acceptable. With programs like Women In Science and Engineering, females are included more.

“That will really help to change the ratio in the long run and get more females into those professions,” Anderson said. “But I think in middle school and high school, there’s always going to be that attitude towards math, because it’s ingrained in middle school culture.”

And though Compton notes that many math-related professions, such as engineers, are still dominated by males, Schwalbe said there is nothing to say that women and men cannot achieve the same things — despite the profession.

“The research shows that women who go into fields other than mathematics, but that make heavy use of mathematics, are no less mathematically adept than their similarly-trained male peers,” Schwalbe said.