I have had the pleasure of pushing many female students into taking calculus but my success rate was about 50%. Each one of my children's friends LOVED STEM and were thinking about going into engineering. All of them said that they were the only girl in the class and were intimidated and the other said it was REALLY boring. Calculus should be easily made fun just exploring the actual concepts in real life similar to a good physical science teacher.

As it happens, my teacher was female.

She was a firm believer in "teach to the test", "do these exercises and follow the magic rules of differentiation, shut up and just do it don't ask why it works".

That's not my jam.

I think many "Math" people get the mechanics and like the functions and miss out on the application.

I remember trying to figure out how the Cha Cha Slide could be a decent Calculus problem. How does the song change the pattern?

When teachers' performance is judged based on test scores, it makes sense where that sort of unfortunate mentality comes from.

What gets measured gets managed.