Letter | Nern: The unconscious bias in Lewis’s ‘Girl Math’ column
I enjoyed Mark Lewis’s lighthearted April 12 column on “Girl Math” and appreciated his humor and self-awareness. However, I’d like to gently point out something the column inadvertently reveals about its own premise.
The behaviors described — rationalizing purchases through cost-per-use, reframing returns as windfall income, justifying expenses through comparison shopping — are not female traits. They are human traits, well-documented in behavioral economics under terms like “mental accounting” and “optimism bias.” Researchers like Nobel laureate Richard Thaler have studied these tendencies across all demographics for decades.
What’s telling is Mr. Lewis’s own admission: he does exactly the same thing with tools, which he cheerfully calls “garage math.” Same behavior. Gender-neutral name. That rebranding — intentional or not — is precisely the problem with the term “girl math” itself. When we attach a gendered label to a universal human behavior, we subtly reinforce the outdated stereotype that women are uniquely irrational with money. That’s a stereotype with real consequences, contributing to the persistent underestimation of women in financial and business contexts.
We’ve been here before. In 1992, Mattel released a Barbie that said “Math class is tough” — and the backlash was swift and deserved, because even a talking toy aimed at little girls was shaping how they saw their own capabilities. We knew then that the message was harmful. Thirty-plus years later, “girl math” sends the same signal with a viral hashtag instead of a pull string.
Mr. Lewis describes a teachable moment with his daughter — and I wish he’d taken a different one. Rather than celebrating the meme, he might have used it to open a conversation about why certain behaviors get feminized and mocked, while the identical behavior in men gets a neutral name and a pass. That’s a lesson worth far more than any sale.
Support Local Journalism
As someone who holds both an MBA and a degree in Finance, I can say with confidence: I love math. I have built my business and medical career relying on it. And it troubles me deeply that girls are still being subtly taught to fear it, to laugh at their own supposed innumeracy, and to see financial irrationality as part of their identity. They deserve better — and frankly, so does Mr. Lewis’s daughter.
The column is warm and well-intentioned, and Mr. Lewis is clearly a gifted storyteller. But good humor can still carry unconscious bias. The most interesting column here might be the one he didn’t write: the one that notices “garage math” and “girl math” are identical, and asks why only one of them gets the gendered, “silly girl” label.
Karen Nern, MD, MBA
Edwards
