substantial sex differences in knowledge of mathematics as it applies in
other fields. It could be, though, that the concern about women and
mathematics has been an expression of social stereotypes, representing a
misidentification of the major barriers to the fulfillment of women's occu-
pational and social aspirations. In this chapter, we examine data about
women's participation in the study of mathematics and about women's
achievement in mathematics in order to arrive at a better understanding of
the problem to which the research reported in this volume was addressed.

At the time of the grants competition that resulted in the studies reported
here, it was believed that women's low rate of enrollment in elective
mathematics courses in high school precluded their entering a variety of
college majors and occupations requiring mathematical competence.
Lucy Sells ( 1973) had reported, based on a random sample of freshmen
entering Berkeley in 1972, that 57% of the males had taken 4 years of high
school mathematics, whereas 8% of the females had done so. In the paper
she prepared for the National Institute of Education (NIE), Fennema
( 1977) reported course enrollment data obtained from the Wisconsin De-
partment of Public Instruction for 1975-76. These data showed compara-

FIG. 1.1 Representation of women in selected college majors.

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