61%
of the top SAT math scorers are boys¹
The case for reaching girls early.
WHY GIRLS
Girls and boys start out equally good at math. Then, step by step, we lose the girls. Here's the data — and what actually works.
Equal ability. Unequal outcomes.
THE GAP AT THE TOP
On average, girls do just as well as boys in math class. But at the highest levels of achievement — the scores that open doors to elite STEM programs — boys outnumber girls significantly, and the gap has barely moved in decades.
2 : 1
boys to girls earning a perfect 800 on SAT math²
4 in 5
qualifiers for the elite AIME math exam are boys³
THE LEAKY PIPELINE
The gap compounds at every step.
57%
— of all U.S. bachelor's college degrees are earned by women⁴
42%
— of math & statistics undergraduate degrees are earned by women⁵
29%
— of new math PhDs are women⁶
12%
— of tenured math professors at PhD-granting universities are women⁷
Women are 50% more likely than men to discontinue their study of calculus after Calculus I¹²
WHY IT MATTERS
Math is a door. Most girls never get the key.
STEM careers pay roughly twice the median of other jobs¹⁰ — and math skills in childhood predict later success better than almost any other school subject¹¹. When girls drift away from math early, they lose options they never knew they had.
WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS
Play early. Play often.
The research is encouraging: this is fixable, and it's fixable young. A University of Chicago study published in Science found kids who did playful math at home gained about three months of extra math learning in one school year — with lasting effects⁸. Johns Hopkins researchers found game-based math clubs significantly reduced kids' math anxiety⁹, one of the biggest reasons girls drift away. And girls who see women doing math — in books, in toys, in real life — are more likely to picture themselves there too.
That's the whole idea behind DonateMath: get the toys, games, and tools into girls' hands early — before anyone tells them math isn't for them.
³ The AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination) is reached only through top scores on the AMC 10 or AMC 12 — competitions that draw over 300,000 entries worldwide each year, of which only about 6,000–7,000 students qualify. In 2021, 1,340 of the 6,350 AIME qualifiers were girls (21%). Source: Mathematical Association of America competition data.
⁴ National Center for Education Statistics; women have earned about 57–59% of U.S. bachelor's degrees in recent years.
⁵ Association for Women in Mathematics / NCES data.
⁶ American Mathematical Society Annual Survey; share has ranged 27–31% for over a decade.
⁷ CBMS survey data via the Association for Women in Mathematics.
⁸ Berkowitz et al., "Math at home adds up to achievement in school," Science, 2015; follow-up in Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018.
⁹ Johns Hopkins University evaluation of the Crazy 8s math club program, 2023.
¹⁰ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023: median annual wage of $101,650 for STEM occupations vs. $46,680 for non-STEM.
¹¹ Duncan et al., "School Readiness and Later Achievement," Developmental Psychology, 2007 — early math skills at kindergarten entry were a stronger predictor of later academic achievement than early reading or attention skills.
¹² Ellis, Fosdick & Rasmussen, "Women 1.5 Times More Likely to Leave STEM Pipeline after Calculus Compared to Men: Lack of Mathematical Confidence a Potential Culprit," PLOS ONE, 2016 — a national survey of Calculus I students; controlling for preparation, career intent, and instruction, women's odds of switching out of the calculus sequence were about 1.5 times those of men.