Are girls excluded from fields of knowledge and work related to mathematical sciences as we live in a time where it seems they have conquered the right to access knowledge and resources?

Does it still make sense today to explore the relationship between gender and mathematics as most international studies on performance claim that any possible sex differences tend to disappear?

Is there ultimately an inherent gender dimension to mathematical ability itself as a property of rational thinking, handling numerical quantities, and visual-spatial perception, given that its "male" nature is easily recalled as an undisputed "truth"?

The book Excluding Girls attempts to answer the above questions by arguing that the relationship between gender and mathematics is not mainly about comparing experiences between boys and girls, but rather about the relationship that develops between subjectivity and mathematical knowledge as a strongly charged site of power.

Within a Foucauldian approach, Valerie Walkerdine argues that the crucial point where established perceptions of femininity, masculinity, mathematics, education, family, and social class converge and form "through discourse" judgments regarding the reality experienced by the subject (as educator, parent, student, and female student) cannot be distinguished and understood outside of historically formed truths and the local context shaped by the respective socio-political structures (e.g., educational systems, curricula, national assessments, etc.).

The analysis proposed in this book allows educators, parents, and students to see the gender dimension in education from a different perspective and provides them with tools to reconstruct unseen aspects of everyday life.

This book is timely today for the reading public in Greece as the emphasis on high performance of students in mathematics, the involvement of families in this process, and the rise of unemployment and insecure work constitute pressing social issues with strong gender dimensions.