The problem is when it gets institutionalized. What's more likely, that your wife just happens to be someone who's not good at math and science, or someone who didn't receive enough encouragement to think she could do well in those subjects? Honestly, I have no idea, since I have no idea who your wife is. But the question cannot be dismissed outright.
Studies that find things such as "Women perform better in math when tested without men"[1] are an indication that something is very wrong at a very fundamental level.
She just wasn't interested, and still isn't. We've been together since school, and I watched her grow up...it had nothing to do with the teacher or institution.
I know it probably isn't popular, but men and women are biologically different. I find it arrogant to believe that humans of the past decade are so intellectually superior that human physiology is of no consequence.
my girlfriend was miserable in her grad school program. it was becoming more and more apparent to her that she should have taken economic development but she'd avoided it because she was 'bad at math'. we spent the next three months doing a crash course of all the math she was 'bad' at and she went from barely understanding algebra to having a better grasp of statistics and calculus than i do. she was only 'bad at math' because she'd spent the first 25 years of her life around people who had let her be bad at math because she was a girl
Like I said, I don't know your wife, so I can't comment.
But she's not the point, anyway.
The point is that you hear of "girls not being good at math and science" much more frequently. But when you control for societal factors, there's nothing that really separates male and female math abilities.
Studies that find things such as "Women perform better in math when tested without men"[1] are an indication that something is very wrong at a very fundamental level.
[1] http://brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2000-01/00-023.h...