"Then there’s the cultural perception of math achievers–the nerds who are heckled in one society are exalted in another. Irina Mitrea, a math professor at Worce

"Then there’s the cultural perception of math achievers–the nerds who are heckled in one society are exalted in another. Irina Mitrea, a math professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Massachusetts, who finished high school in Romania, says she never felt discouraged there ..." in my experience (with a sample size of ~10), the only women i've interacted with who were super excited about (and good at) pure math and theoretical CS (Ph.D. students) grew up in eastern europe or india, and when i asked them about their experiences growing up as females who loved math, they said that it felt completely normal in their home society and that they were shocked that there was this stigma against girls being able to do math in the US ... [again, this is only my tiny biased sample size, just my 2 cents!]