&#62; Girls often believe themselves to be bad at math, in accordance with gender stereotyping<p>This seems to be taking one (politically motivated) assumption and making it into an uncontested piece of background information.<p>There's a fair bit of good data that suggests that women are, on average, not as good as men at math.<p>Perhaps some girls have math anxiety in the same way that some (male) nerds have anxiety about meeting new people: they KNOW that the task is difficult for them, and they don't want to fail.<p>&#62; The study found that when elementary school teachers, who are primarily female, displayed a high level of anxiety about math, that skittishness was transmitted to their female students.<p>Of course, if female teachers are less skilled at math, then that would also explain the findings.