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Can mathematics break down barriers to entry—in markets, in society—imposed by gender? Mathematician and math popularizer Cheng takes a positive view.

“Math isn’t just about getting the right answers; it’s about dreaming up different worlds in which different things can be true.” The author writes inductively of her experiences as a woman in a field dominated by men to arrive at an alternate world in which gender is not a determinant in who fails, who succeeds, who has access, and who does not. A specialist in category theory—a branch of mathematics in which theories and not theorems govern—Cheng proposes that many arguments about supposed gender absolutes can be reframed. For example, she breaks down the logical implications in the syllogism that says that men are better at math than women, because they are better at systematizing—ergo, “being a man implies being better at math.” But what if the frame were moved to encourage decomposition of the terms? “Men have been observed to be statistically more likely to be stronger at systemizing than empathizing, for some very specific definitions of these words,” a strength that often resolves in ways such that “we might expect more men than women to become mathematicians.” The onus is not on numeracy but instead on structures that push people into different endeavors. In a spry—and not number-heavy—text, Cheng suggests that inherent ability is not as important as how math is generally taught: the ponderous lecturer at the front of the class, the mostly bewildered students trying to follow along. She proposes a “congressive,” group-oriented solution to problem-solving to replace the “ingressive” model, which presupposes that learning is a sort of Darwinian matter of survival of the fittest. Most truisms about gender difference, she notes, are “because of bias, not biology,” and the reframing she suggests makes this bias clear.

A carefully developed argument that urges us to discuss character traits without reference to gender.