Gender Stereotyping

Though women account for half of the overall medical school enrollment, they comprise only 1/3 of students who end up pursuing surgery (according to John Hopkins University), which continues to be a male-dominated field.  This disparity can be traced back to social conditioning, as females are not expected to excel or be interested in the maths or sciences from a young age.  This has led to the stereotype that most women simply lack the biological means to exhibit competence in these areas.  Because this stereotype is widespread, people often look for individual cases to confirm it and apply their single experiences to the entire population of females.  This is exemplified in the above picture.  A male sees another male write a math function incorrectly and he just thinks the guy is dumb.  In the next picture, the male sees a female write a math function incorrectly, causing him to posit that girls (in general) "suck at math."  Such sweeping generalizations have severe consequences.  They can infiltrate the minds of employers and contribute to a tendency not to hire females for certain jobs and they also certainly contribute to the wage gap between men and women.