>>40477122"muh brains" is midwit cope perpetuated to distract from the real issue: western school systems (which japan's is also based on) are terrible at teaching challenging subjects in general and math specifically. We still teach math like we did in the 1800s despite having radically different and more nuanced understanding of how people actually learn.
People aren't just taught math poorly, but are subject to such uncomfortable treatment while trying to learn math than the mental associations they form are fundamentally traumatic regardless of how much or how little they actually learn. In adulthood, they then actively avoid thinking about numbers or using the math and logic skills they developed in school to solve adult problems, because simply accessing those parts of their brain stimulate the trauma response. It's not that they can't think about numbers, it's that they actively avoid thinking about numbers. They would rather guess and be wrong than invoke the uncomfortable emotions bundled with the knowledge and methods they actually do know.
As for why this phenomenon seems to affect more women than men, you might as well ask why so many men suck at baking despite it just being applied chemistry; social framing and cultural context influence how we develop skills and cope with trauma--though largely this just means the majority of adult men terrible at math pretend to be better than they actually are because they're more ashamed of being perceived as woman-brained than of their actual math competence.
