Women and the "math factor"

Was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about women and business school. According to some recent studies, women stay away from business school because they fear the math. As a former middle school girl's algebra teacher, I think it's terrible. Even at 13 girls would come into my class with the notion that alegebra was this crazy topic they weren't going to be able to learn. It was hard to break them of that, many don't overcome it. In my class it was especially difficult because algebra comes at a time when girls are struggling with confidence in general. It's a lot easier for them to say, "I can't do it", because the society around them says the same thing and parents, family, etc, assume they are going to have math difficulties.

I had never expanded my thinking on this till today, when I read that article and subsequently discussed it with a female friend considering business school but worried about the math aspects. What I never thought about was how this idea pervaded our society all the way through into adulthood. Could a fear of math or lack of confidence in math skills be the reason why there aren't more women in business? All the top business schools are 70/30 male/female ratios. A stunningly high disparity, some are as much as 80/20. I wonder how much of this is due to the "math factor" as I will call it.

Sure, there could be other factors that keep the women numbers lower, such as the unappealing idea of taking two years and large debts for school then starting a new career a year or two before having to leave the work force to have children. But, there's got to be more. Maybe I'm unfairly blaming this on math, but maybe not... Regardless, our society needs to update it's views on women and math and give girls a chance to develop strong math skills with confidence.