While I was growing up, I myself heard a lot about boys doing better than girls in school. Girls participated less than boys in class, I read somewhere . Maybe that explained why they showed less grasp of important concepts on some tests. Perhaps the problem was that teachers and parents had lower expectations of girls' mathematics and science ability and didn't encourage girls as much. Or maybe it was gender, stereotypes which made girls want to focus more on their body rather than their brain, in order to be more attractive to boys. Something was going wrong for girls, anyway. Everyone agreed on that