efforts to break down stereotypes are also necessary gender stereotyping takes place from an early age and is pervasive across society at home in schools in the media and through daytoday social attitudes and interactions which embed and reinforce them this contributes to the clustering of women and men into different subject areas in secondary school and higher education as various studies have shown the low representation of women in science technology engineering and mathematics is related to attitudes rather than ability girls for example do not receive lower scores in mathematics