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Abstract
The aim of the current study is to investigate whether Swedish secondary school students perceive mathematics as a female, male or gender‐neutral domain. A sample of 1300 students in two age groups, 15‐ and 17‐ years, answered a questionnaire and about 50 students participated in interviews. The main part of the inquiry form consists of Who and mathematics, an attitude scale recently developed by other researchers. The results are analysed with respect to gender, school year and study programme. Gendered attitudes were found among considerable minorities. There is a marked tendency to view mathematics as a symbolically male domain: positive aspects are associated with boys and negative aspects perceived as more female. Older students hold more strongly gendered views than younger. Boys in the science programme have the strongest beliefs of mathematics as a male domain.
Acknowledgment
The authors thank the Swedish Research Council for a two‐year grant (2001‐3907) that made the project possible. We thank all members of the GeMa group for stimulating and productive co‐operation. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for valuable comments and Bo Becker for suggestions for clarifications in an earlier version of the article.
Notes
1. There are a few items that cannot be said to be solely about mathematics. These items concern more general aspects e.g. disturbing lessons, get on with work. For this reason they are not included in the analysis.
2. The choice of how to define ‘substantially more’ is somewhat arbitrary and must be seen as a tool to construct the categories. We have chosen to define ‘substantially more’ as at least four more answers for one side than for the other. Other delimitations, however, yield roughly the same structural result.