Don't get me wrong we need to do the same with boys but found this interesting. My daughter was told in school that girls are bad at math. I never was able to dispel that myth in her head.
Funny (?) story - back in Ohio, in 3rd grade, my daughter was in the 'high' math and reading classes. In 4th grade, they decided that having differentiated classrooms made the lower performers 'feel bad' so they went to homogeneous classrooms. Suddenly, she couldn't do multiplication tables that I *knew* she had done the prior year. The following year, we moved here to Colorado where she informed her 5th grade teacher that she didn't 'do' math
Fast forward many years, she's enrolled in an online college curriculum which requires posts in forums for most classes.... all of a sudden she's acing her classes (including math) and based on comments in the forum is considered a 'math whiz'.
See..... I always thought that them telling her she is bad at math made her not even think of trying it.
If you look at school of mines. 20 years ago there were probably 3 girls in the classes now I think it is close to 10-20%.
I believe it is because of what they believe girls can do. Or at least that plays a part.