 Persistently low participation—or the appearance of low participation because of the invisibility of women—lends support to a problematic schema. Schemas are “hypotheses that we use to interpret social events” (Valian 1999: 103)—in this case, the hypothesis that girls and women are not suited to the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The cultural milieu in which girls and women find themselves pursuing science is one in which stereotype threat (Steele 1997) is just one of the many challenges they must face. Stereotype threat is the activation of internalized negative stereotypes, so that when the subject is reminded of their belonging to the stereotyped group their performance is affected so that it is consistent with the stereotype. Girls reminded that they are girls perform less well on mathematics tests when the dominant stereotype is that “girls don’t do math”. Thus it can be part of a cycle that helps perpetuate the low numbers through impacting scores on tests and in classes that function as entry points to science careers. However, there is evidence that counterexamples—such as the awareness of successful women in these fields—can diminish this effect thus potentially ending the cycle.