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 occupational 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 Department of Public Instruction for 1975-76. These data showed compara-

FIG. 1.1 Representation of women in selected college majors.

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