Journal of Urban Mathematics Education 

December 2016, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 81–121 

©JUME. http://education.gsu.edu/JUME 

 

 

  

LUIS A. LEYVA is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Van-

derbilt University, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, PMB 230, GPC, 230 

Appleton Place, Nashville, TN, 37212; email: luis.a.leyva@vanderbilt.edu. His research interests 

include issues of gender and sexuality in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) 

education, marginalized student populations’ experiences in undergraduate mathematics education, 

and gender-affirming and culturally responsive mathematics teaching and STEM support programs. 

An Intersectional Analysis of Latin@ College 

Women’s Counter-stories in Mathematics 
 

Luis A. Leyva 

Vanderbilt University 

 
In this article, the author discusses the intersectionality of mathematics experiences 

for two Latin@ college women pursuing mathematics-intensive STEM (science, 

technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors at a large, predominantly White 

university. The author employs intersectionality and poststructural theories to ex-

plore and make meaning of their experiences in relation to discourses of mathemat-

ics ability and pursuits of STEM higher education. A cross-case analysis of two 

Latin@ college women’s counter-stories details the development of success-

oriented beliefs and strategies in navigating the discourses that they encountered 

institutionally and interpersonally in their mathematics experiences. Implications 

are raised for P–16 mathematics and STEM education to broaden equitable learn-

ing opportunities for Latin@ women and other marginalized groups’ construction 

of positive mathematics identities at intersections of gender and other social identi-

ties. 

 

KEYWORDS: gender, higher education, intersectionality, Latin@ women, mathe-

matics identity, undergraduate mathematics  

 

“She pursued a math career, culture caught up with her”  
– Tracey, Latin@ college woman 

 

xtant research has often adopted either gender or race for its lens of analysis in 

understanding experiences of marginalization among women and students of 

color in mathematics (see, e.g., Berry, 2008; Boaler, 2002; Damarin, 2000; Fenne-

ma, Carpenter, Jacobs, Franke, & Levi, 1998; Martin, 2000; Mendick, 2006; Stin-

son, 2008; Terry, 2011). Research that focuses on a single dimension of identity, 

however, risks homogenizing group experiences and overlooking within-group dif-

ferences for negotiating discourses1 in mathematics and society at large. 

                                                        
1 In this context, I draw on Stinson’s (2008) definition of discourses as the “language and institu-

tions as well as complex signs and practices that order and sustain sociocultural and sociohistori-

cal constructed forms of social existence” (p. 977). 

E 

http://education.gsu.edu/JUME
mailto:luis.a.leyva@vanderbilt.edu


 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       82 

At the undergraduate level, scholars have largely focused on examining statis-

tical trends of negative influences among women, African Americans, and           

Latin@s2 with limited analysis of factors for their retention and academic success in 

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; Chapa & De La Rosa, 

2006; Cole & Espinoza, 2008; Simpson, 2001). In efforts to disrupt discourses of 

STEM underachievement and underrepresentation associated with these popula-

tions, it is also important for research to qualitatively unpack these student popula-

tions’ strategies of resilience and persistence in STEM higher education at intersec-

tions of gender, race, and other dimensions of their social identities. 

Researchers exploring equity issues in STEM higher education have begun to 

leverage intersectional analyses to obtain nuanced understandings of social influ-

ences on retention and student experiences among underrepresented groups, partic-

ularly, historically marginalized women of color and members of the LGBTQ+ 

(lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer/questioning, and other) community (Camacho 

& Lord, 2013; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; Espinosa, 2011; Lord et al., 2009; Reyes, 

2011). Mathematics education scholars have also called for such intersectional con-

siderations of marginalized students’ strategies in negotiating mathematics experi-

ences with gendered and racial discourses (Esmonde, Brodie, Dookie, & Takeuchi, 

2009; Lim, 2008; Martin, 2009; Oppland-Cordell, 2014; Zavala, 2015). 

I argue that intersectional analyses can nuance our understandings of mathe-

matics as a gendered and racialized space across the P–16 school pipeline as well as 

inform ways to better support and broaden opportunities for minoritized popula-

tions in mathematics. Coupled with a conceptualization of gender as socially con-

structed and discursively produced differently across contexts and individuals (But-

ler, 1990), intersectional analyses allow for explorations of how the racialized mas-

culinization of mathematics structures inequitable access and opportunities among 

African American and Latin@ women—two marginalized populations whose expe-

riences are largely unexplored in mathematics education research. 

In this article, I present case studies of two Latin@ college women in their 

second semester of pursuing mathematics-intensive majors3 at a large, predomi-

nantly White institution in the northeastern United States. Using poststructural theo-

ry (e.g., St. Pierre, 2000) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) as well as 

critical race theory (CRT) methodology (e.g., Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), I closely 

examine these Latin@ women’s counter-stories focusing on negotiations of their 

                                                        
2 Drawing on Gutiérrez (2013), the term Latin@ decenters the patriarchal nature of the Spanish 

language that traditionally groups Latin American women and men into a single descriptor Latino, 

denoting only men. The @ symbol allows for gender inclusivity among Latin Americans com-

pared to the either–or form Latina/o, implying a gender binary. 

 
3 In the context of this study, mathematics-intensive is defined as STEM majors requiring at least 

two semesters of calculus based on the university’s curriculum. Such majors include but are not 

limited to astrophysics, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       83 

experiences in high school and first year of college with discourses in mathematics, 

STEM higher education, and society more broadly. This analysis proposes the fol-

lowing questions to explore mathematics as a socially exclusionary space: 

 

1.    What are the dominant discourses of mathematics ability and STEM high-
er education raised in the two Latin@ college women’s counter-stories? 

 

2.    To what extent did they encounter these discourses in school and class-
room structures as well as interpersonal relationships during high school 

and in college? 

 

3.    What strategies did they employ in making meaning of their experiences 
and navigating these discourses at intersections of their gender, race, and 

other identities? 

 

Literature Review 
 

In this section, I present a review of relevant literature starting with an over-

view of intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). With intersectionality as a 

tenet of CRT, I then examine the extent to which intersectionality has been ex-

plored in prior mathematics education research that adopted CRT methodology (So-

lórzano & Yosso, 2002). I then review research outside of CRT work to document 

how intersectionality has been leveraged in exploring issues of gender in mathemat-

ics education. I particularly focus on research about gender as it is the other dimen-

sion of social identity besides race that has been most widely studied in mathemat-

ics education as well as comprised the original intersection (race/gender) that moti-

vated the theorization of intersectionality in Black feminist thought. To conclude 

the review, I examine intersectional analyses across equity work in STEM higher 

education to argue for the use of intersectionality in detailing mathematics as a so-

cially exclusionary space and informing ways to better support marginalized popu-

lations, including women of color, during their transition into undergraduate math-

ematics education. 

 

Intersectionality and Black Feminist Thought 
 

Intersectionality is a concept based in Black feminist thought that was coined 

and adopted by Crenshaw (1989, 1991) to detail intersectional forms of marginali-

zation legally and politically experienced by historically marginalized women of 

color in the United States. Crenshaw (1991) highlighted the importance of attending 

to the “intersecting patterns of racism and sexism” (p. 1243) that are often not re-

flected in feminist and antiracist discourses shaping legal and political structures. 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       84 

Although Crenshaw’s legal analyses focus on Black women’s lived experiences at 

intersections of race and gender, she acknowledged that the complexity of intersec-

tional oppression can be further elucidated by attending to other dimensions of in-

dividuals’ social experiences including class, immigration, and sexuality (Cren-

shaw, 1991). 

Intersectionality then refers to unique forms of intersecting oppression that 

emerge from gender, race, class, sexuality, and other social categories “func-

tion[ing] as parallel and interlocking systems” (Collins, 1993, p. 29) of domination 

and subordination. At intersections of gender and race, for example, hooks (1981) 

detailed the American Black female experience during times of slavery, the Civil 

Rights movement, and feminist movements by attending to “both the politics of 

racism and sexism from a feminist perspective” (p. 13) rather than solely sexism. 

W. E. B. Du Bois similarly pursued an intersectional analysis of the Black political 

economy with race, class, and nation as intersecting “social hierarchies that shaped 

African American access to status, property, and power” (Collins, 2000b, p. 42). 

Collins (2000b) critiqued Du Bois’ analysis as “progressive yet paternalistic” (p. 

43). While Du Bois aligned with Black feminist thought in his description of Black 

women’s unique societal oppression, he viewed gender more as a “personal identity 

category” (p. 42) than as a system of power and thus was left unexamined in his 

intersectional analysis. Crenshaw’s (1991) and Collins’ (2000b) assertions for the 

analytical significance of centering intersections to obtain more holistic understand-

ings of gendered as well as racialized lived experiences have been taken up in rela-

tion to class (Davis, 1981; Feagin & Sikes, 1994), nation and immigration (Anthias 

& Yuval-Davis, 1992; Yuval-Davis, 1997), and sexuality (Lorde, 1982; Moraga & 

Anzaldúa, 1981). 

 

Intersectionality in Mathematics Education Research 
 

In mathematics education research, studies have illustrated how systems of 

power result in gendered and racialized struggles among marginalized groups to 

access high-quality educational opportunities and to prove their academic legitima-

cy (Barnes, 2000; Berry, 2008; Boaler, 2002; McGee & Martin, 2011; Mendick, 

2006). These analyses advanced understandings of social influences that impact 

mathematics achievement and identities with varying degrees of attention to the 

intersectionality of experience among sampled populations and study participants. 

Much research that adopted CRT methodology foregrounds race in its anal-

yses while intersections of race and other social forms of oppression (e.g., gender, 

class) are left implicit beyond the sampling of participants (Berry, 2008; Berry, 

Thunder, & McClain, 2011; McGee & Martin, 2011; Terry, 2010). In their study of 



 

 

 

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six academically resilient, Black4 mathematics and engineering college students’ 

life stories, for example, McGee and Martin (2011) examined how these students 

co-constructed their mathematics and racial identities through stereotype manage-

ment in response to racial stereotypes of Blacks’ limited mathematics ability and 

non-academic behaviors. McGee and Martin acknowledged room for further analy-

sis in their study about the intersectionality of the Black students’ racialized experi-

ences and argued that such an analysis can only be considered by first unpacking 

the racialization of mathematics: 

 
Our focus on race does not imply that race, class, and gender intersections are not im-

portant. However, more nuanced understandings of race…must be developed among 

mathematics and science educators if these intersections are to be seriously considered. 

(p. 1349) 

 

I agree with McGee and Martin as well as other critical race scholars about the im-

portance of documenting variation of racialized experiences to challenge deficit-

based racial discourses in mathematics. However, I argue that holding off on inter-

sectional analyses is unnecessary as intersectionality serves as an analytical tool for 

capturing such variation in racialized forms of mathematics achievement and expe-

riences to disrupt deficit discourses about students of color. 

In his participatory action research (PAR) study, Terry (2010) used CRT 

methodology to document seven high school Black male youth’s construction of 

mathematics counter-stories about imprisonment and college enrollment. He point-

ed to the lack of generalizability of his findings across different intersectional sub-

groups including Black women who must navigate uniquely racialized and gen-

dered discourses (e.g., crack mothers, welfare queens). He also acknowledged the 

generative opportunities of framing future PAR research in “broader theoretical 

discussion of constructed academic identities vis-à-vis Black masculinity” (p. 96). I 

argue that this opportunity can be extended to mathematics education research more 

broadly to provide insight into the gendered variation among women and men of 

color in making meaning of racialized experiences in mathematics and society. This 

call for analytical attention to notions of Black masculinity captures the need for not 

only more intersectional understandings of mathematics as “racialized forms of ex-

perience” (Martin, 2006, p. 198), but also theorizations of gender as a non-binary 

                                                        
4 Here, I use the term Black rather than African American to be consistent with the cited authors’ lan-

guage choice. McGee and Martin (2011) acknowledged the variation in racial identity within the group 

descriptor Black in relation to cultural background and nation of origin. Black refers to a group of mul-

tigenerational individuals that can include those born in the United States and those who immigrated to 

the United States (Clark, 2010; Swarns, 2004). The term African American refers to a subgroup of 

Black individuals tied to a history of slavery and struggles for civil rights in the United States (Joseph, 

Hailu, & Boston, in press). I use the term African American throughout the remainder of the article to 

remain consistent with the participants’ racial self-identifications.  



 

 

 

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social construct and thus shaped by other vectors of identity. This intersectional 

analysis would be an advancement of the sex-based conceptualizations of gender 

across much CRT work in mathematics education that leaves implicit how partici-

pants’ mathematics experiences are shaped by the dynamic interplay of race, gen-

der, and other social identities (Leyva, in press). 

Intersectionality has also been minimally examined outside of CRT work in 

mathematics education to better understand achievement and experiences among 

marginalized populations in mathematics. Scholars, in addition to issues of race, 

have examined mathematics as a gendered space in light of women’s undera-

chievement and underrepresentation as well as the valuing of heteronormatively 

masculinized norms of mathematical engagement (Barnes, 2000; Boaler, 2002; 

Fennema et al., 1998; Mendick, 2006). Elsewhere, I reviewed research on gender in 

mathematics education to document how the majority of this extant work problem-

atically conflated gender with biological sex as well as minimally attended to gen-

dered variation in mathematics achievement and participation at different intersec-

tions of identity (Leyva, in press). 

It is important to take note, however, of research studies that were exceptions 

to this lack of intersectional considerations for sex and gender, including works 

which highlighted influences of race and ethnicity (Birenbaum & Nasser, 2006; 

Brandon, Newton, & Hammond, 1987; Riegle-Crumb & Humphries, 2012; Stanic 

& Hart, 1995), culture (Hanna, 1989; Oppland-Cordell, 2014), class (Lubienski, 

2002; McGraw, Lubienski, & Strutchens, 2006), and sexuality (Esmonde et al., 

2009). Such intersectional insights not only challenged the long-standing discourse 

of male superiority in mathematics, but also captured the affordances of coupling 

quantitative and qualitative insights to detail how the social construction of gender 

gives rise to variation in mathematics achievement and participation among mar-

ginalized groups. 

 

Intersectionality and Women of Color in Undergraduate STEM Education 
 

Intersectionality has been largely taken up in research that explores equity is-

sues in STEM higher education with a strong focus on the experiences of women of 

color. The summer 2011 issue of the Harvard Educational Review (Malcom & 

Malcom, 2011) for example, featured an assortment of works about women of color 

in STEM higher education including a quantitative analysis of STEM persistence 

predictors compared to White women (Espinosa, 2011) and an interview study de-

tailing challenges in transferring from community colleges to 4-year universities as 

STEM majors (Reyes, 2011). These works raised implications for higher education 

institutions in carving opportunities that attend to the intersectionality of being a 

woman of color in STEM, including active recruitment in undergraduate research 

programs, building community with other minoritized women in and out of STEM 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       87 

classrooms, and professional development for STEM faculty to better inform teach-

ing based on the needs and experiences of women of color. 

Camacho and Lord (2013) pursued a more focused intersectional analysis 

specifically on the gendered and racialized experiences of Latinas5 navigating the 

exclusionary culture of undergraduate engineering education. In reflecting on their 

findings about Latinas managing microaggressions6 of academic ability and estab-

lishing counter-spaces, Camacho and Lord (2013) echoed Espinosa’s (2011) and 

Reyes’ (2011) calls for change in higher education that attends to the intersectional-

ity of Latinas’ experiences particularly through rethinking recruitment, mentorship, 

and co-curricular program design. 

Looking across these intersectional analyses of student experiences in under-

graduate STEM education, I argue that there remains analytical space to leverage 

intersectionality as a tool to detail the culture of undergraduate mathematics and 

document marginalized students’ strategies in navigating this space as well as the 

role of institutional agents for student support. Such intersectional analyses are par-

ticularly important to consider for underrepresented students during their first year 

of undergraduate studies in light of the academic, social, and affective challenges 

that they encounter during their transition into STEM majors (Crisp, Nora, & Tag-

gart, 2009; Hurtado, Newman, Tran, & Chang, 2010; Reyes, 2011). More specifi-

cally, an intersectional analysis of the mathematics experiences among women of 

color, including Latin@ women, during their first year of undergraduate STEM 

studies will add insights to the field of mathematics education—a space with mini-

mal work on the intersectionality of experience among women of color and a recent 

call for equity research at the undergraduate level (Rasmussen & Wawro, in press). 

 
Theoretical Perspectives 

 

In this section, I elaborate the theoretical perspectives that informed data collec-

tion and analysis. Race is conceptualized as a social construct that intersects with prop-

erty rights giving rise to systemic inequalities (including education) in the United States 

among people of color (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Gender is theorized as a social 

construct discursively produced or performed differently across individuals and con-

texts (Butler, 1990). The theoretical perspective of intersectionality was adopted to de-

tail the Latin@ women’s strategies in navigating institutional structures and interper-

                                                        
5 I use the term Latina here to remain consistent with Camacho and Lord (2013)’s adopted lan-

guage in their study. 

 
6 Microaggressions are defined as everyday communicative actions or verbal expressions that may 

or may not intentionally slight target or marginalized individuals (Sue, 2010). Macroaggresions 

are broader communicative acts toward target or marginalized individuals on systemic rather than 

individual levels (Sue et al., 2007). 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       88 

sonal relationships that shape mathematics as a socially exclusionary space at different 

intersections of social identities. Poststructural theory guided the detailing of discourses 

raised in participants’ negotiations of their mathematics experiences and identities as 

Latin@ women pursuing mathematics-intensive STEM majors before and during their 

first college year at a large, predominantly White university. 

 

Intersectionality and Critical Theories 
 

As previously discussed, intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) is a theoreti-

cal perspective from Black feminist thought that considers how intersections of race, 

gender, class, and other social identities shape marginalized individuals’ narratives of 

oppression and resistance. It serves as a tenet of CRT, Latin@ critical race theory 

(LatCrit), critical race feminism (CRF), and various other subfields of critical theory. 

CRT applied to education addresses the “centrality of race and racism and their inter-

sectionality with other forms of subordination” (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000, p. 

63) such as sexism and classism in schools and classrooms. Intersectionality in edu-

cational research framed by CRT, therefore, “challenges the separate discourses on 

race, gender, and class by showing how these three elements intersect to affect the 

experiences of students of color” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 24). Race, class, and 

gender are three of the many intersecting social categories that can be considered in 

detailing intersectionality of experiences in education and society (Collins, 2000a, 

2000b; Crenshaw, 1991). 

LatCrit, a “theoretical cousin” to CRT, addresses the intersectionality particularly 

among Latin@s with analytical considerations of experience at intersections of race, 

sex, gender, class, and other social dimensions (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001). 

LatCrit, therefore, complements CRT by considering issues of culture, immigration, 

and language among Latin@s that often go unexplored in CRT (Delgado Bernal, 

2002). Similar to LatCrit, CRF is another theoretical offshoot from CRT that fore-

grounds the intersectional experiences of marginalization and empowerment particular-

ly among women of color (Wing, 2000). CRF serves as a “feminist intervention within 

CRT” (Wing, 2000, p. 7) that uses an anti-essentialist lens to examine the experiences 

of women of color not only as distinct from those of men of color, but also widely vari-

able at different intersections of identities including race, gender, class, and sexuality. 

The use of internationality theory in this study, therefore, allowed me to leverage the 

complementary nature of CRT, LatCrit, and CRF to center the Latin@ women’s voices 

as well as detail the intersectional variation in their mathematics experiences at institu-

tional, interpersonal, and ideological levels of analysis. 

 

Poststructural Theory 
 

Poststructural theory’s conceptualizations of discourse and power were used to 

frame the analysis of Latin@ women’s counter-stories. A discourse is a “historically, 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       89 

socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and 

beliefs” (Scott, 1988, p. 35). Discourses structure behavior and language in ways that 

highlight the “surface linkages between power, knowledge, institutions, [and] intel-

lectuals… as these intersect in the functions of systems of thought” (P. A. Bové, as 

quoted in St. Pierre, 1990, p. 54). In this study, discourses refer to norms and behav-

iors of mathematics ability and STEM higher education structured by racism, sexism, 

and other intersecting systems of oppression that shape the mathematics experiences 

of marginalized student populations including Latin@ women. 

Power is theorized as multiple systems of relations in constant flux across in-

dividuals and contexts (Foucault, 1997/1984). Halperin (1995) writes, “Power is 

thus a dynamic situation, whether personal, social, or institutional” (p. 17, emphasis 

in original). Discourses are, therefore, contextual manifestations of these varying 

power relations that inform one’s positioning across the intersecting systems at dif-

ferent moments. Foucauldian thought asserts that power comes with resistance in 

which strategic moves are adopted in reaction to sociocultural discourses of oppor-

tunity and oppression. Such agency in these reactions, however, is within limits 

maintained by these power relations that perpetuate the status quo in society (St. 

Pierre, 2000). Drawing on Martin’s (2009) and Mendick’s (2006) scholarship, this 

study theorizes mathematics as a source of power that structures a hierarchy of abil-

ity aligned with society’s inequitable opportunities for dominant and marginalized 

groups. 

In poststructural theory, individuals are conceptualized as discursive subjects 

whose identities are socially constructed through their negotiations of sociocultural 

discourses and power relations (St. Pierre, 2000; Walkerdine, 1990). Individuals’ 

identities, therefore, are in a perpetual state of flux and produced as discursive re-

sponses to dynamically changing power relations in everyday society. Poststructur-

al theory goes further to describe how identities and systems of meaning are mutu-

ally produced with such “meaning[s]… strategically reinterpreted, reworked, and 

deferred since there is no referent for the subject” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 503). 

Using a sociocultural lens, Martin (2006) defines mathematics identity as— 

 
dispositions and deeply held beliefs that individuals develop, within their overall self-

concept, about their ability to participate and perform effectively in mathematical con-

texts…. A mathematics identity encompasses a person’s self-understanding of himself 

or herself in the context of doing mathematics. (p. 206) 

 

By applying a poststructural lens to Martin’s (2006) definition, mathematics identi-

ties are social constructions constantly negotiated across different contexts in re-

sponse to discourses shaped by intersecting systems of oppression such as racism, 

sexism, classism, and heteronormativity (see, e.g., Berry, Thunder, & McClain, 

2011; Boaler & Greeno, 2000; Esmonde, 2009; Mendick, 2006; Stinson, 2008). In-

dividuals as multidimensional beings construct their mathematics identities at junc-



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       90 

tures of multiple yet often contradictory discourses upheld by institutions (e.g., 

schools, mathematics classrooms), other individuals (e.g., peers, teachers), and so-

ciety (Barnes, 2000; Stinson, 2008). The nature of individuals’ negotiations of these 

discourses varies when attending to different intersections of identity dimensions 

including class, culture, gender, race, and sexuality. Mendick (2006) and Stinson 

(2008), for example, detailed how students are constantly negotiating gendered and 

racial discursive binaries of mathematics ability including “masculine/feminine” 

and “White/Black,” respectively, with masculinity and whiteness mapping onto 

mathematics ability. Stinson (2008) went further to highlight the complexity of 

such discursive negotiations by describing how “[discursive] subjects live at inter-

sections of these binaries” (p. 992, emphasis added) with the saliency of binary di-

mensions varying across contexts and individuals. These negotiating practices in-

form the study’s intersectional analysis used to examine Latin@ college women’s 

experiences and thus detail how they co-constructed their social and mathematics 

identities as responses to discourses in mathematics, STEM higher education, and 

society. 

Overall, these theoretical perspectives collectively informed the study’s meth-

odology that addresses the need for scholarship in mathematics education exploring 

the intersectionality of mathematics experience among historically marginalized 

student populations. More specifically, these perspectives were applied to closely 

examine two Latin@ women’s co-constructions of their mathematics and social 

identities by making meaning of their mathematics experiences in relation to dis-

courses that are gendered, racialized, classed, and so on. This study, therefore, ex-

amined how in engaging with these discourses, the two Latin@ women differential-

ly negotiated their positions along the hierarchy of mathematics ability across con-

texts and at different intersections of their social identities. Such discursive negotia-

tions offered insight into the Latin@ women’s success-oriented beliefs and strate-

gies in navigating these discourses encountered institutionally and interpersonally 

throughout their mathematics experiences. 

 

Methods 
 

CRT informed the study design including the analytical construction of the 

two Latin@ women’s counter-stories. The counter-storytelling methodology is an 

analytical approach to “telling the stories of people whose experiences are often not 

told (i.e., those on the margins of society)” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32). 

While counter-stories can be narratives that challenge dominant discourses of mar-

ginalized groups in society, they can also be what Solórzano and Yosso (2002) call 

“unheard counter-stories” (p. 32) that may not necessarily push back on these dis-

courses yet still offer insight into individuals’ strategies of survival and resistance in 

navigating sociopolitical contexts. The counter-story analysis presented here attends 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       91 

to both kinds of narratives of experience shared by the Latin@ women that either 

did or did not challenge discourses in mathematics and STEM higher education. 

Solórzano and Yosso (2002) identified three types of counter-stories: (a) per-

sonal stories or narratives, (b) other people’s stories or narratives, and (c) composite 

stories or narratives. Counter-stories presented in this analysis are based on other 

people’s stories or narratives—namely, the two Latin@ college women’s reflec-

tions on navigating mathematics as a socially exclusionary space. The construction 

of their counter-stories was aligned with Solórzano and Yosso’s outline of the four 

functions that counter-storytelling methodology serves: (a) building community 

among members of marginalized groups, (b) challenging dominant discourses to 

transform established societal beliefs, (c) presenting different realities of marginali-

zation to individuals with shared forms of oppression, and (d) constructing another 

world richer than the counter-story and lived experience alone can provide. 

With a poststructural analysis and sociocultural view of mathematics identi-

ties, I examined the Latin@ women’s counter-stories as discursive productions 

mapping onto instances of disconnect and marginalization as well as affirmation 

and empowerment that impacted the co-construction of their mathematics and so-

cial identities (Martin, 2009). The coupling of poststructural theory and CRT’s 

counter-storytelling, therefore, guided the detailing of racial, gendered, and other 

discourses across the Latin@ women’s counter-stories that were raised to make 

meaning of their mathematics experiences. The analysis, therefore, attended to the 

varying influences of these discourses across institutional contexts and interperson-

al relationships as the Latin@ women made meaning of their experiences. Intersec-

tionality, as a tenet of CRT and other critical theories that frame the analysis, al-

lowed for highlighting the variation across the Latin@ women’s discursive moves 

in these identity constructions including beliefs and strategies that they adopted to 

navigate them at intersections of gender, race, and other social identities. 

A qualitative case study methodology (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Yin, 2003) 

was employed such that the Latin@ women’s counter-stories were the “cases,” or 

units of analysis, used in detailing the extent to which mathematics was a socially 

exclusionary experience for them. In efforts to gain holistic accounts of the Latin@ 

women’s mathematics experiences, their counter-stories were constructed by look-

ing across multiple data sources including mathematics autobiographies, individual 

interviews, and focus group discussions. These counter-stories addressed the re-

search questions by exploring what were the dominant discourses raised, when and 

where the Latin@ women encountered them, and how they similarly and uniquely 

navigated them in co-constructing their mathematics and social identities. 

 

Research Context 
 

I began conducting the study in spring 2013 at a large, public 4-year universi-

ty located in the northeastern United States. According to the university’s 2013 in-



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       92 

stitutional profile, African Americans and Latin@s comprised less than a quarter of 

the fall 2012 undergraduate student population. Latin@s made up about 13% of 

full-time students in fall 2012. Men and women in general enrolled at the university 

at comparable rates. 

Of the undergraduate population in their first year during fall 2006, Latin@s 

graduated from the university within 4 years at a rate of 34%. African Americans 

and Latin@s earned baccalaureate degrees at rates ranging between 10 and 15% by 

the end of the 2011–2012 school year. Considering only about 10% of the universi-

ty’s conferred degrees were in STEM, an even smaller percentage of these degrees 

were conferred to Latin@s. African Americans and Latin@s comprised about 6% 

of the university’s full-time faculty in fall 2012. Latin@ women were least repre-

sented among full-time faculty members, a total of 26 with and without tenure in 

fall 2012.  

 

Participants 
 

Eight first-year college students pursuing mathematics-intensive majors at the 

same university were recruited for the research study. The term first-year is used as 

a descriptor of the participants’ first year of university enrollment. This included 

two African American women, two African American men, two Latin@ women, 

and two Latin@ men. Participants were drawn from a STEM support program at 

the university. The program’s support services focused on providing underrepre-

sented college students with co-curricular activities and networking opportunities to 

advance their academic and professional development in STEM. By the start of da-

ta collection, participants had taken at least one college mathematics course (e.g., 

pre-calculus, calculus) during their first semester. 

This article focuses on findings related to the two Latin@ women partici-

pants, Lauren and Tracey (pseudonyms). To address the research questions, Lau-

ren’s and Tracey’s counter-stories are presented as cases with each offering a rich 

and unique account of the intersectionality of experience for a Latin@ woman in 

mathematics and STEM higher education. The cross-case analysis, presented later, 

was conducted with the intent to detail similarities as well as differences between 

Lauren’s and Tracey’s individual experiences. It should be noted that my analytical 

focus on Latin@ women’s mathematics experiences is not intended to perpetuate 

notions of intersectionality as being solely about issues pertaining to women of col-

or. Rather, it addresses an intersectionality of experience minimally discussed in the 

mathematics education literature while attending to Crenshaw’s (1991) discussion 

of how other social identities besides race and gender (e.g., class, culture, immigra-

tion) shaped the two Latin@ women’s oppression and empowerment in mathemat-

ics. 

The following table presents profiles for Lauren and Tracey. This table out-

lines participants’ pursued STEM majors, high school student demographics, most 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       93 

recently completed college mathematics course, and career goals. Participants’ ini-

tial STEM major interests continued throughout the study. The variation across the 

two participants’ high school demographics is noteworthy especially when consid-

ering their respective experiences of transitioning into a predominantly White uni-

versity space. Along with taking calculus during her first semester, Tracey had prior 

calculus experience in high school and a summer bridge program for incoming 

STEM students at the university.  

 

Table 1 

Participant Profiles 
 

Name Race/Gender 
STEM  

Major 

High School  

Demographics 

Completed  

College  

Mathematics 

Career Goals 

Lauren Latin@ woman 
Computer  

Science 

Predominantly 

White 

Advanced  

Pre-calculus 
Undecided 

Tracey Latin@ woman Mathematics 
Predominantly 

Latin@ 

Calculus I for 

STEM majors 

High school 

mathematics 

teacher 

  

Data Collection 
  

Three data sources were used to construct the first-year Latin@ college wom-

en’s counter-stories: (a) mathematics autobiographies, (b) individual interviews, 

and (c) focus group discussions. In this section, I discuss the nature of each data 

source and how it contributed to answering the research questions on mathematics 

as a socially exclusionary experience for the Latin@ college women participants. 

To layer the data collection, excerpts from participants’ mathematics autobi-

ographies were incorporated into individual interviews and focus group discussions 

to clarify and probe meanings of key statements. This sequential data collection re-

inforced and provided more nuance of findings throughout the study. 

Mathematics autobiographies. Participants wrote two- to three-paragraph au-

tobiographies on their mathematics experiences during high school and college. 

They reflected on their favorite and least favorite mathematics courses with details 

on the nature of their participation, relationships with teachers, and classroom struc-

tures and interactions. Participants provided similar reflections on their most recent-

ly completed college mathematics courses. 

The mathematics autobiographies were submitted prior to participants’ indi-

vidual interviews. Stimulus excerpts were used during interviews to probe partici-

pants about connections between their mathematics experiences and being a Lat-

in@ woman. In addition, high school and college mathematics reflections were 

used to probe participants on what being successful looked like across these con-



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       94 

texts, how these messages of mathematics success were communicated, and what 

strategies they employed to meet these standards of success. 

Individual interviews. Each participant completed a 90-minute, semi-

structured individual interview focused on four themes about their mathematics ex-

periences, including high school, college courses, STEM support program partici-

pation, and views on women and racially minoritized groups in mathematics and 

STEM at large. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Excerpts from the 

mathematics autobiographies were used to examine gendered, racialized, and other 

social influences on high school and college mathematics experiences. Some ques-

tions used to probe these dynamics included: “How do you feel as though Latin@ 

women are encouraged or discouraged from pursuing mathematics?” and “Why do 

you think so many fellow Latin@ women like yourself do not make it in mathemat-

ics?” 

Focus group discussions. After the interview, participants completed a focus 

group discussion with three other participants to motivate peer discussions on Afri-

can American and Latin@ women and men in mathematics and STEM at large. 

Each focus group participant was paired with another participant of the same inter-

sectional identity. These pairings were intended to establish welcoming discussion 

environments so participants would not feel tokened and could possibly relate to at 

least one other participant’s shared perspectives while also highlighting differences 

between their experiences. Finally, by having two different intersectional identities 

represented, this focused the analysis on similarities and differences between inter-

sectional groups as well. Focus group discussions were audiotaped and transcribed. 

During each focus group discussion, participants were presented with five 

mathematics student narrative excerpts from four mathematics education articles on 

marginalized students’ mathematics experiences (Berry et al., 2011; Lombardi, 

2011; Mendick, 2005; Stinson, 2008). Participants were asked to read these five 

excerpts and select one or two with which they either strongly associated or disas-

sociated based on their experiences. These excerpts, drawing on Stinson’s (2008) 

methodology, provided participants with language to engage in expressive, critical 

conversations surrounding social issues in mathematics. Participants were probed 

for gendered, racialized, and other social significance in their reactions to the stimu-

lus narrative excerpts. Some probing questions included: “To what extent does di-

versity play a role in your college mathematics experiences at the university?” and 

“What are some examples from your high school and college experience when you 

felt your mathematics ability was judged based on your gender and/or race?” 

In addition, participants were asked to discuss issues regarding African Amer-

ican and Latin@ women’s and men’s current underrepresentation as well as these 

groups’ projected future participation and success in STEM. Latin@ college wom-

en participants were presented with questions such as “How has your STEM sup-

port program involvement, if at all, influenced how you see yourself as a Latin@ 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       95 

college woman in STEM?’ and “As a Latin@ college woman pursuing a mathemat-

ics-intensive STEM degree, how do you see the future of women and underrepre-

sented minorities in STEM including mathematics? What ideas or experiences 

bring you to raise this claim about the future diversity of STEM?” 

  

Data Analysis 
 

Connections across these three data sources were used to write counter-stories 

of the Latin@ women’s mathematics experiences. Intersectionality guided a cross-

case theme analysis to examine patterns in the first-year Latin@ college women’s 

constructions of mathematics identities as responses to discourses related to inter-

sections of gender, race, and other identities (Miles & Huberman, 1994). 

Using poststructural and intersectional lenses of analysis, the counter-stories 

were openly coded for discourses specific to mathematics ability and STEM higher 

education (Bowleg, 2008). Axial codes were used to identify institutional and inter-

personal contexts in which participants encountered these discourses as well as the 

strategies adopted for navigating them (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). (See Leyva [2016] 

for full details of coding.)  

One of the key aspects of intersectional analysis in qualitative research is 

making participants’ implicit experiences of intersectionality explicit, including 

when participants do not report them (Bowleg, 2008). Counter-stories, therefore, 

were examined for “subtexts” of how participants discursively constructed mean-

ings of their mathematics experiences particularly at the intersections of gender, 

race, and other social identities (Banning, 1999). Open and axial coding of counter-

stories and their subtexts served to illuminate the intersectionality across partici-

pants’ discursive negotiations of mathematics as a socially exclusionary experience. 

Analytical memos were written throughout the data collection and analysis 

processes. Memos were dated to trace the development of data interpretations in-

cluding possible themes, areas of needed clarification, and key connections to the 

research literature. Memos and annotated transcripts were used to develop the open 

and axial coding schemes and strengthen the rigor of the findings. 

A colleague independently coded excerpts from the transcribed data to con-

firm the accuracy of the open and axial coding schemes. This colleague was pro-

vided a detailed codebook containing descriptions and sample instances of each 

open and axial code. An assortment of excerpts corresponding to different open and 

axial codes was selected for this independent coding task. Any coding disagree-

ments were discussed during code reconciliation meetings until they were resolved 

and necessary coding scheme adjustments were made. 

Member checking the accuracy of the transcripts, coding scheme, and data in-

terpretations was also completed (Creswell & Miller, 2000). Two member checks 

were held with participants in spring 2013. I structured the member checks as in-

formal group conversations where participants, as “authors of their own experienc-



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       96 

es,” were positioned as experts whose critiques and recommendations to strengthen 

the rigor of my analysis were welcomed. Participants were presented with coded 

excerpts across data sources and asked to reflect on the accuracy in terms of tran-

scription and interpretations. Some questions used to structure the member checks 

included: “Did the applied codes accurately reflect the nature of influences that 

shaped the mathematics experiences shared in these excerpts?” “Are the strategies 

that I claimed you adopted in being a mathematics student accurate?” and “Is there 

anything that you think should be added to the coding scheme or my interpretations 

that is a critical part of your experience as a Latin@ women in mathematics?” 

The member checks informed necessary revisions to the coding scheme and 

preliminary findings. Disagreements during member checks about codes and inter-

pretations were discussed until resolved. If the disagreement stemmed from a par-

ticipant wanting something from her experience to be captured, I incorporated these 

comments into the final write up of her counter-story. If any coding or interpreta-

tion disagreement was unresolved, it was not included in the analysis. 

Researcher identity, positionality, and trustworthiness. As a Latin@ man who 

graduated as a mathematics major and researches mathematics experiences of un-

derrepresented populations in STEM, I brought an understanding of my positionali-

ty in pursuing data analysis and interpretations with strong subjectivity to develop 

nuanced understandings of mathematics as a socially exclusionary experience. I 

was aware that my Latin@ identity allowed me to relate to feelings of underrepre-

sentation, academic disadvantage, and struggle that participants as students of color 

may have experienced with mathematics and STEM higher education.  

Mutual identification with participants as a person of color who also pursued 

a mathematics-intensive STEM major allowed for the establishment of intersubjec-

tivity that built positive rapport and trustworthiness (Glesne & Peshkin, 1999; Lin-

coln & Guba, 1999). As a 4-year employee in the university office overseeing the 

STEM support program, I approached the study with strong familiarity of the pro-

gram and ongoing visibility to student members during monthly meetings and 

events. Such participant–researcher connection captures the use of my “multiple 

identities as an interaction quality” (Berry, 2008, p. 472) to create welcoming spac-

es for the first-year Latin@ college women to share and reflect on their mathemat-

ics experiences. 

Despite these mutual understandings of experience, I also acknowledge my 

gendered privilege and varying social distance from the Latin@ women participants 

in experiencing mathematics as a man. Awareness of my shifting positionality 

throughout the study played an important role in identifying moments “where self 

and study were intertwined” (Stinson, 2008, p. 987). Thus, consciousness of my 

positionality as a Latin@ man in mathematics allowed me to connect in different 

ways with the Latin@ women as well as be willing and open to learn from them. 

 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       97 

Findings 
 

I organize this section by first presenting the two cases, Lauren’s and Tracey’s 

counter-stories. Each case begins with an overview of each Latin@ college women 

participant’s connections to mathematics, including reflections on her favorite and 

least favorite mathematics courses. The two counter-stories focus on the intersec-

tionality of Lauren’s and Tracey’s experiences as Latin@ women studying mathe-

matics in high school and at the university. They were constructed to detail institu-

tional and interpersonal contexts in which Lauren and Tracey encountered dis-

courses of mathematics ability and STEM higher education. The counter-stories 

also describe the success-oriented beliefs and strategies that they adopted in negoti-

ating their identities as Latin@ women in mathematics with these discourses. 

I then present a cross-case theme analysis of Lauren’s and Tracey’s counter-

stories. I organized the analysis by four identified discourses across the counter-

stories. The theoretical and methodological principles of intersectionality guide this 

cross-case analysis by highlighting both common and distinct experiences of mar-

ginalization and empowerment as Latin@ women in mathematics at intersections of 

gender, race, culture, class, and immigration. 

 

Lauren’s Counter-story 
 

Lauren is a first-generation, El Salvadoran-American woman pursuing a 

computer science major. Her interest in computer science began when her high 

school accounting teacher took note of her mathematical problem-solving skills and 

connected her with the school’s computer science teacher. She saw herself as “al-

ways good at math.” While a shy student across classroom spaces, Lauren’s math-

ematics ability brought her to feel more comfortable in high school mathematics 

courses where it was “okay for [her] to talk.” Lauren described how classmates 

would comment on her being less engaged during mathematics classes, which she 

saw as being related to her “natural” mathematics ability: 

 
A lot of the times students would tell me or classmates would say like, “You barely 

pay attention but you get good grades”; and that’d be true like I really would be on my 

phone for the whole class and I would pay attention and I’d do my homework and all 

that, but I would get good grades ‘cause it came naturally to me. (Individual Interview) 

 

Lauren positioned herself as not needing to invest as much effort in paying attention 

during class as her classmates because of her innate mathematics ability. She also 

distinguished herself from peers whose lack of natural mathematics ability may 

have brought them to struggle with understanding the subject and thus not like 

mathematics. Lauren commented: “I feel like it’s not hard to understand math, but 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       98 

maybe that’s just me because I get it. Maybe if I didn’t get it, I wouldn’t be saying 

the same thing.” 

Favorite and least favorite mathematics courses. A supportive relationship 

with teachers was the defining quality of Lauren’s more favorable mathematics 

course experiences. Algebra II Honors, for example, was Lauren’s favorite high 

school mathematics course in light of her “friendly relationship” with her teacher. 

Lauren described how her teacher genuinely cared for his students. He also “did not 

give up on any student” even when they expressed struggles with the course mate-

rial. 

Along with establishing a positive connection with her teacher, Lauren re-

flected on working well with Algebra II classmates who enjoyed mathematics like 

her as opposed to those who seemed to not care about mathematics as much: 

 
Some of them didn’t want to learn math or didn’t much care much for math so it was 

like hard with them. But others—they enjoyed math as much as me or as I did so it was 

easy [with them]…. Some of the students didn’t really engage. Like they didn’t just 

want to be there. Maybe because they didn’t like math. (Individual Interview)  

 

Here we see how Lauren separates fellow students into two groups—namely, those 

who like mathematics (including herself) and then those who do not. Lauren 

acknowledged the important role that one-on-one teacher attention can play in help-

ing students understand mathematics and thus influence their liking of the subject. 

According to Lauren, “If [a] person who said they don’t like math, if they had an 

individual person teaching them instead of being in a big class, they would under-

stand it.” This statement captures how, in spite of viewing mathematics ability as 

innate and possibly tied to one’s affect toward the subject, Lauren perceived teach-

ers as being able to facilitate students’ understandings of the content and apprecia-

tion of mathematics. A notable tension, therefore, resides in Lauren’s reflections on 

mathematics ability—namely, between views of it being innate and natural and 

views of it being developed through teaching and student learning. 

Pre-calculus was Lauren’s least favorite high school mathematics course. She 

shared how her pre-calculus teacher lacked a “consistent method of teaching” char-

acterized by inaccurate assumptions of what students already knew and a “fast 

pace” without re-visiting earlier concepts. The teacher’s instructional approach, 

therefore, contrasted with that of Lauren’s Algebra II Honors teacher who “would 

stop and ask if everyone understood what he was doing…so rarely did anyone not 

understand his [teaching] method.” 

Lauren, therefore, also valued mathematics teaching that focused on student 

understanding during high school. Although Lauren saw herself in the same posi-

tion as her pre-calculus classmates as not learning much, she set herself apart as be-

ing less affected by her teacher’s poor instruction than other “students [for] who…it 

takes a long time for them to get math.” It is noteworthy how Lauren draws on her 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       99 

natural mathematics ability to distance herself from struggling peers across two 

mathematics courses with contrasting instructional approaches. 

This distinction between her and her peers’ mathematics classroom experi-

ences is also observed in Lauren’s discussion of her relationship with the pre-

calculus teacher. Although the pre-calculus teacher seemed “really nice” in her 

teaching and cultivated a “friendly environment” in the classroom, Lauren de-

scribed how she was not approachable in the context of seeking extra help by nega-

tively judging students who struggled. 

Nonetheless, Lauren saw herself having a relational advantage over class-

mates because she felt as though mathematics teachers established stronger connec-

tions with students who were “good at math” like her. Lauren remarked, “When 

you’re good at math, teachers find that they enjoy talking to you more because you 

have that connection like you can relate.” She saw the pre-calculus teacher as seem-

ing to have “really liked the fact that [she] liked math” yet was firmer with her than 

other students with lower levels of mathematics ability. Lauren, therefore, perceived 

her mathematics ability as affording her status in pre-calculus that allowed her to 

receive higher-quality and more rigorous support from teachers. The relational 

spaces of mathematics classrooms (including quality of instruction and student sup-

port) coupled with views of mathematics ability as innate or developed, thus, large-

ly shaped Lauren’s reflections of her favorite and least favorite mathematics cours-

es. 

Peers and family. During high school, Lauren was subjected to peer com-

ments particularly from Latin@ boys about Latin@ women not being good at 

mathematics or expected to go to college. She looked back on how these boys 

would often make remarks to Latin@ girls who were also young mothers such as 

“You should be at home taking care of the kids” when they saw them in class or 

thinking about applying to colleges. Below Lauren reflects on Latin@ boys’ re-

marks about Latin@ girls and mathematics:  

 
Like all of the Hispanics like my friends they would say things like even to us—their 

friends—like “Oh you shouldn’t be going to college or trying to be good at math” 

cause they just think that it’s not normal for a girl to be good at math especially a Lati-

na girl. (Focus Group Discussion) 

 

Lauren explained how these comments seemed to originate from parents’ and older 

generations’ gendered division of labor in the Latin@ household. For example, she 

described how her older family members upheld values where “the men worked 

and the women stayed at home” based on times of their upbringing. Despite hearing 

high school peers’ disparaging remarks and living in a household with gendered 

family roles, Lauren shared how this did not impact her academic pursuits because 

her family still encouraged her to “break that tradition” and pursue a college degree. 

Lauren distinguished her family’s academic encouragement with many other Lat-



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       100 

in@ family situations that perpetuate traditional cultural expectations of women 

becoming mothers and wives rather than pursuing a college education. 

Upon graduating from high school, Lauren did not see fellow Latin@ gradu-

ates trying hard to advance academically or professionally. She described how it 

was “really disappointing” that most of her Latin@ high school peers seemed com-

placent with receiving a high school diploma and “not really doing anything” like 

seeking higher education. She alluded to also observing such forms of complacency 

among her Latin@ family members, particularly, her older cousins: 

 
A lot of my older cousins are living their life with a job and not having much of school 

besides a high school diploma…. I feel like they will begin to see that you can live a 

life with a degree and more comfortably. And my aunts and uncles, that’s what they 

would like for their children and I feel like they will end up pursuing school because 

they know it leads to a better future. So that’s what I’m hoping: that Latinos will start 

getting involved more [in STEM]. (Individual Interview)  

 

Here we see how Lauren’s older cousins receive forms of academic encouragement 

from her aunts and uncles about pursuing higher education similar to that which she 

receives from family to disrupt ideas of Latin@ girls not receiving college degrees. 

Lauren, furthermore, seems to use this example about her older cousins to il-

lustrate a way in which Latin@s can increase their participation in STEM. She saw 

her pursuits of a STEM degree as a first-generation college student serving as an 

opportunity to be a “role model” for younger family members: 

 
I am the first generation…to go to college in my family so obviously the older people 

like they are doing their own thing. They are not going to college so that doesn’t influ-

ence or impact them. But the younger ones like my nephews, my nieces, my cousins, 

they still have time so I feel like I would just like to be their role model so they can feel 

like they can do it as well…. Hopefully they’ll go into STEM. (Individual Interview)  

 

In this excerpt, Lauren discussed how being a role model in her family would allow 

younger relatives to see another Latin@ pursuing STEM and thus be encouraged to 

feel like they can do the same. She perceives such academic encouragement in her 

family for pursuing STEM higher education as a way to increase Latin@s’ repre-

sentation in STEM and thus “become a majority in these fields.” Family, therefore, 

plays an important role for Lauren in managing peers’ disparaging comments about 

Latin@ girls as well as perceiving the value of higher education for broadening Lat-

in@s’ participation in STEM. 

First year of college. At the university, Lauren enjoyed her advanced pre-

calculus course with a professor and teaching assistant who “wanted everyone to do 

well.” She reflected on how the professor’s “friendly” nature and one-on-one sup-

port opportunities may have largely motivated students’ office hour participation, 

which she viewed as uncommon across her university courses. It is noteworthy how 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       101 

Lauren’s positive experience with college pre-calculus aligned with her preferred 

aspects of high school mathematics—namely, teachers with a “friendly” nature as 

well as classroom instruction structured for student learning and support. 

It was during college calculus, however, when Lauren reconsidered her pur-

suits of a computer science major. Lauren mainly attributed her reconsideration to 

her struggles in learning calculus due to the quality of her professor’s teaching. She 

described how she was doing “not as good as [she] should be” in calculus because 

she was unable to connect with the calculus professor’s teaching and felt less en-

gaged in class compared to her high school years: 

 
That’s partly because I rely a lot on the teacher and if I feel like the teacher isn’t teach-

ing then well I kind of slack…. I don’t answer questions or ask questions either…. And 

it’s not because I’m not comfortable with the people around me, but it’s like I’m not 

comfortable with the teacher ‘cause I know that if I ask him, he’ll explain it to me and I 

still won’t understand it. (Individual Interview) 

 

Despite Lauren’s claim of mathematics “coming naturally” to her, it is interesting to 

consider how she saw herself struggling in calculus because she depends on teach-

ers to be successful. 

Her calculus professor’s teaching, therefore, brought Lauren to resort to 

teaching herself the material by reading the textbook and seeking help from other 

students in her first-year, all-women residence hall. These actions made Lauren feel 

“overwhelmed with math” as well as fearful that she will always be teaching herself 

and, in turn, stop liking mathematics: 

 
I don’t want to have to be in too many classes that it’s too much for me to handle or 

that I don’t enjoy to do it anymore. It kind of scares me. I don’t want to ever feel like 

I’ll be bad at math. Right now in calc, there is a possibility that I’ll learn it and that I 

understand it but I don’t want to have to like continue to having to teach myself like 

that. (Individual Interview) 

 

Lauren’s calculus experience brought her to feel as though she would face similar 

struggles throughout the remainder of her college mathematics coursework to the 

point of no longer liking and feeling like she was bad at mathematics. Although 

Lauren previously experienced disagreeable instruction and an unapproachable 

mathematics teacher in high school, these high school experiences did not cause her 

to think that she would stop being good at or enjoying mathematics as much as it 

did during college.  

When asked to identify an either positive or negative turning point in her ex-

perience as a mathematics student, Lauren reflected on how college calculus 

brought her to fear that she would have to possibly compensate for her future math-

ematics professors’ limited teaching abilities: 

 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       102 

The professors—they may be great at math or like really good at math but I don’t feel 

like teaching is their thing.… It kinda scares me that I’ll forever be like teaching myself 

and I don’t want to have to like have to teach myself even though a lot of students do 

it. (Individual Interview) 

 

Lauren’s idea of being naturally good at mathematics coupled with how teaching 

herself was not resulting in better grades led her to question continuing the comput-

er science major. It is important to note how Lauren distinguished becoming “less 

interested in mathematics” and the process of “teach[ing] herself.” This distinction 

is important because it captures how Lauren did not disassociate with mathematics, 

but rather the idea of learning mathematics without receiving teacher support—a 

defining quality of her more favorable mathematics courses. Lauren’s reconsidera-

tions, therefore, do not arise from seeing herself as mathematically incapable, but 

rather from exercising her agency to avoid situations like teaching herself that jeop-

ardize her confidence and enjoyment of mathematics. 

Another observed difference between Lauren’s high school and college math-

ematics experiences was the salience of her gender identity as a woman in STEM 

classrooms. Lauren reflected on often being the only or one of the only women in 

her college courses. For example, she saw student enrollment in her computer sci-

ence courses as racially diverse but being less balanced between boys and girls with 

her often being the “only girl.” Lauren then went on to contrast this with her high 

school mathematics experience: 

 
Yeah, I guess I experienced it differently than like in my high school. The math de-

partment was really split up. Like there was both female teachers and male teachers. I 

don’t feel like it was a gender thing. I mean like it probably would come out if there 

were more male teachers, but because there was female teachers, I don’t think the gen-

der thing was that much of a thing or a big problem. (Focus Group Discussion) 

 

Lauren perceived the presence of women as mathematics teachers in her high 

school serving as a way of showing students, particularly the boys, that “a female 

can do it [mathematics] too” and thus reduced possible “tension…with females” in 

mathematics. Thus, the noted contrast of gender representation Lauren to feel as 

though issues of gender in mathematics and STEM were more salient in college 

than in high school. 

During her first college year, Lauren took a women’s leadership course where 

she came across statistics indicating that Latin@ women were the most underrepre-

sented group in STEM. Lauren attributed these statistics to Latin@ women 

“lack[ing] the encouragement” and how they “weren’t mentored enough” to pursue 

STEM including mathematics. In contrast to remarks of Latin@ women not being 

good at mathematics that Lauren encountered during high school, she rationalizes 

Latin@ women’s underrepresentation in terms of not receiving adequate forms of 

support allowing them to feel that they can do it. For example, Lauren commented 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       103 

on how other Latin@ girls may not consider doing mathematics due to lack of en-

couragement from their families: 

 
I don’t really think that they [Latin@ girls] find like it’s an option for them. Maybe 

they feel they should be more like in the liberal arts or…doing something else. Like 

they don’t really consider math. But then maybe they weren’t taught that they could do 

math. Like their parents might say like, “You can’t do math. What are you gonna do 

with that?” (Individual Interview) 

 

It is important to consider how Lauren’s explanation of Latin@ girls’ underrepre-

sentation in STEM aligns with her experience of receiving academic encourage-

ment from family to pursue STEM higher education as a Latin@ woman.  

 

Tracey’s Counter-story 
 

Tracey is a Cuban-American woman pursuing a double major in mathematics 

and theater arts to become a high school mathematics teacher. She saw mathematics 

as “what [she] was good at” and “made [her] confident. Tracey reflected on how 

helping peers in high school affirmed her ability and confidence in mathematics. 

Her confidence, however, was challenged as a high school sophomore when she 

received a C in her Algebra II Honors course that brought her to perceive success in 

mathematics as a matter of hard work rather than natural ability. Tracey recalled 

thinking to herself: “I’m not going to get good at this if I don’t take time out of my 

day [to study]. I can’t just rely on the fact that ‘Oh, I’m good.’ I have to work on 

being good.” The Algebra II Honors course grade, therefore, served as a turning 

point in Tracey’s mathematics experience: a “heartbreaking” and a “very memora-

ble moment” that guided her approaches to future mathematics courses of investing 

and time and effort to do well. 

When looking back on the Algebra II Honors course, Tracey recalled the 

challenge of balancing academics and “girl things”: 

  
It was a lot of girl things that were going on…. I was in a lot of clubs. I was having my 

quincenera so that was stressful. I was president of like the choir and I was one of the 

leads in the musical and in a performing arts academy. And I had a lot of things on my 

plate so it was really hard to balance everything. (Individual Interview) 

 

She clarified that in addition to extracurricular activities, “girl things” included in-

terest in boys and managing friendships, which she saw as distracting her from do-

ing well in mathematics. Tracey described, “I think they affected them [her Algebra 

II course experiences] greatly because I couldn’t only focus on math because I was 

focusing on social life and real-life problems.”  

Favorite and least favorite mathematics courses. Tracey’s passion for math-

ematics was largely influenced by her high school education that began early when 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       104 

she was recommended to take Algebra I Honors in eighth grade. Although Tracey 

chose Algebra I Honors as her least favorite high school mathematics course, this 

disfavor was based more on the “overwhelming” academic transition into high 

school rather than aspects specific to her teacher and the classroom. Tracey viewed 

eighth-grade mathematics as a building block for algebra so she saw herself strug-

gling because it was “really hard to have to balance two math classes” with the high 

school course going at a faster pace. 

Advanced Placement [AP] Calculus was Tracey’s favorite high school math-

ematics course. The teacher, Mr. Sosa (pseudonym), was available for extra help 

during and after school hours as well as approached his calculus teaching in ways 

that allowed her to make connections with previous topics. Tracey reflected on how 

Mr. Sosa communicated his prioritization of the students’ mathematics success to 

the class: 

 
Mr. Sosa from day one told us, “No one in this class is gonna fail…. I am putting you 

up on this pedestal. You’re gonna reach it. You have no other choice,” in a nicer way 

than the way I’m saying it right now. And he just gave us so many opportunities. (Indi-

vidual Interview)  

 

Mr. Sosa’s coupling of academic and relational support played an important role in 

shaping AP Calculus as Tracey’s favorite mathematics course. To do this, he re-

minded students of his high academic expectations for them and openness to sup-

porting them throughout the course. Tracey kept in contact with him after high 

school graduation as it was “thanks to him that [she] enjoy[s] math.” 

Another favorable aspect of the AP Calculus course experience was her 

classmates who she previously knew from growing up in their “small, well-knit 

town.” The familiarity of her AP Calculus classmates facilitated the formation of 

informal peer study groups outside of class. Tracey saw study group meetings as 

comfortable, supportive spaces that were “really, really fun” and allowed her to col-

laborate in learning mathematics with her AP Calculus classmates. 

Tracey commented on how mutually identifying with mathematics teachers in 

terms of social and cultural backgrounds could be beneficial in having shared un-

derstandings of how gendered, racial, and other marginalizing stereotypes shape 

educational experiences: 

  
It helps I guess if the teacher is the same race and/or gender…. Because I mean if like 

okay let’s go with race, if they are of the same race, they understand more the cultural 

side and the cultural generalizations that have been made about you, are made about 

you, and will be made about you. So they understand your background and what 

you’re dealing with at home…. If I have a girl teacher…she’s gonna understand the 

competition with the men in the class so it would be nice to have someone to relate to. 

(Focus Group Discussion) 

  



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       105 

Tracey’s remarks illustrate how shared social identifications enable teachers to 

build relationships with students that leverage cultural insights and gender aware-

ness to disrupt discourses that may limit educational opportunities.  

To illustrate this dynamic, Tracey discussed how most of her high school’s 

faculty was comprised of Latin@ men including Mr. Sosa who would often “stick 

up” for her during moments when classmates criticized her “basic small questions” 

in mathematics: 

 
Everybody in class would be like, “We learned that 5 years ago. What are you doing 

here?” It’s just like those little snarky comments…I get comments from the students 

and then like teacher [Mr. Sosa] would stick up for me and say: “Guys, it’s a question. 

You probably don’t know the answer. Do you know the answer? No.” So, he was on 

my back. (Focus Group Discussion) 

  

Tracey presents a classroom moment of how she saw Mr. Sosa managing status of 

mathematics ability often tied to gender and race by responding to peers’ criticisms 

of her questions perceived as reflecting lower mathematics ability. Such teacher–

student connections responsive to diversity in mathematics classrooms highlights 

the importance of teachers being critically aware of and actively challenging dis-

courses about mathematics ability as well as the need for increased diversity of 

mathematics teachers in the United States. Tracey’s high school mathematics expe-

rience motivated her pursuits in mathematics so she can return as a mathematics 

teacher in her hometown and support Latin@ girls with managing gendered cultural 

stereotypes. She stated: “I wanna be a math major…. Because I love my high 

school and my town so much, I wanted to be a high school teacher for math and go 

back and show all the little girls that you can do it. Beat the culture!” 

Peers and family. Tracey took note of girls’ underrepresentation as being one 

of only four girls in the class. Such underrepresentation gave rise to what Tracey 

called “gender battles” between girl and boy classmates framed by notions of boys 

being better at mathematics and smarter than girls: 

  
There was four girls in the class…. So, it was really nice to have at least my two very 

best friends in the class with me ‘cause we were the only girls…. The guys would try 

to give us gender battles like it’s ‘cause guys are smarter. And I was number two in 

calculus just proving to the guys. (Individual Interview) 

 

Tracey described how such “gender battles” created a competitive learning envi-

ronment in the classroom that brought her to feel as though she had to constantly 

prove being smarter than the boys. Such gendered competitiveness brought some 

boys to get upset about “getting beaten by a girl,” which motivated Tracey to do 

well so she didn’t “lose again to these guys… [who] think they are better.” 

Furthermore, Tracey discussed how the “gender battles” motivated her and 

fellow “really smart” girl classmates who were also Latin@ to support each other in 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       106 

bringing boys to feel “threatened by [their] girly greatness.” She referenced such 

collectivism among the Latin@ girls to make a case for its important role in the 

mathematics success of Latin@ women underrepresented in STEM fields. Tracey 

commented: “There’s not many of us [Latinas] out there. In my [AP Calculus] 

class, there were only four of us: one girl didn’t do so well and the other two did I 

guess because we stuck together.” Tracey’s reflections capture how the potentially 

marginalizing discourses of girls’ mathematics ability that fueled the “gender bat-

tles” of the AP Calculus course came to be challenged and engaged constructively 

among Tracey and her fellow Latin@ girl classmates. 

Tracey described how such support from her fellow Latin@ girl classmates 

was meaningful due to their shared understandings of gendered cultural pressures: 

 
All of my Latina friends from high school, we were either first-generation American or 

were immigrants that were born out of the country and came here. So it’s really nice to 

have the support from them ‘cause they all had what I had at home which was, “Have a 

child young, get married.”  We all said: “We are not gonna do that. We are gonna go to 

college.” (Focus Group Discussion)  

 

This reflection illustrates the important role that peer connections with other Lat-

in@ girls played in Tracey’s experience of not only challenging notions of girls not 

being good at mathematics, but also negotiating Latin@ family values with her pur-

suits of higher education. She described her sense of satisfaction and mutual sup-

port with having several of her hometown friends—fellow Latin@ college wom-

en—enroll in the same university so they could “stick through [it] together.” One of 

the girls from the AP Calculus course, for example, enrolled in the university’s en-

gineering program so Tracey and her continued studying together for mathematics 

after high school. Tracey commented on how it was helpful studying with her be-

cause she was someone familiar—namely, her “best friend for like six years.”  By 

sustaining this peer network from high school, Tracey and her peers continued sup-

porting each other in navigating college academics while also negotiating family 

expectations of maintaining the cultural status quo of Latin@ women. 

Moreover, Tracey discussed how teenage pregnancy was common, or a “cas-

ual thing,” for Latin@ girls in her hometown. She recalled hearing comments from 

high school mathematics classmates made toward Latin@ girls such as “Go back to 

the kitchen” and “You need to be married.”  Tracey described how others at the 

university were “shocked and…appalled” learning about her friends’ early preg-

nancies rather than the support expressed by high school peers. Such contrasting 

reactions to teenage pregnancies at the high school and university capture peers’ 

different levels of awareness between the two spaces about familial pressures that 

Latin@ girls experience about becoming young mothers and wives. By asserting 

their shared pursuits of a college education instead of marrying and having children, 

Tracey and her Latin@ girl peers held mutual understandings of this gendered cul-



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       107 

tural expectation and supported one another in “beating the stereotypes of race 

and…the social norms of gender” by pursuing higher education. 

Family, therefore, also played a role in shaping Tracey’s connection to math-

ematics. She alluded to family influences of immigration, financial struggle, and 

gendered cultural narratives in describing why she saw herself as “a perfect exam-

ple of why the Latinas don’t make it in mathematics.” Tracey reflected on how be-

ing a first-generation college student in the United States entailed managing elderly 

family members’ “very old-fashioned” views of a gendered division of household 

labor taken up in Cuba—namely, “the men work, the women nurture…. The men 

provide the money, the women clean the house.” 

Tracey, for example, discussed how her grandmother who recently immigrat-

ed to the United States criticized her for “slacking” because she was attending col-

lege at eighteen years old instead of “get[ing] married [and] start[ing] a life” so she 

can provide her with great grandchildren. Such family expectations of motherhood 

and marriage shaped Tracey’s views of Latin@ women throughout her upbringing: 

“Latina women—you’re a mom. You are to breed and work for, tend to your hus-

band. At least that’s what I grew up thinking.” 

This view of Latin@ women’s role in the family stood in opposition to 

Tracey’s intended pursuits of “further[ing] [her] education” and obtaining a college 

degree in mathematics. Tracey saw her mother as a frame of reference of what can 

happen to a college-bound Latin@ woman when “culture catches up” to her in the 

United States. In particular, her mother was unable to complete a college degree in 

mathematics education after she was pregnant with Tracey and began financially 

supporting the family as the only working adult in the household: 

 
I grew up and still live in poverty. My mom works a horrible job that she hates. My 

dad can’t work…. He’s disabled…. My grandmother can’t work. She’s old…. We 

struggle…. I saw what happened to my mom. She pursued a math career, culture 

caught up with her, and now she’s in that situation. If I go down that path, I am not go-

ing to move forward…. She doesn’t want what happened to [her] to happen to [me]. 

(Individual Interview)  

 

Tracey uses her mother’s story as motivation to major in mathematics and become 

a mathematics teacher. Furthermore, Tracey acknowledged her pursuits in mathe-

matics allow her to avoid being in the same position as her mother after falling vic-

tim to gendered cultural pressures faced by Latin@ women. 

In addition, Tracey reflected on hope for change in the prevalence of stereo-

types about Latin@ women as young mothers and not being college-educated so 

opportunities for Latin@ women like her in STEM are increased. She alluded to 

how such change would allow her to “move forward and…carry on [her] mom’s 

legacy” of becoming a mathematics teacher. Thus, Tracey’s reflections illustrate 

how knowledge of her mother’s culturally-influenced experiences as well as shared 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       108 

experiences with Latin@ girl classmates navigating stereotypes of mathematics 

ability and higher education shaped her academic and professional pursuits to chal-

lenge discourses that marginalize Latin@ women. 

First year of college. Tracey remarked on her appreciation of having persona-

ble college mathematics instructors who connected with their students. She de-

scribed how her first-semester calculus teaching assistant, Vince, was the “funniest 

man ever” who the students regularly approached during weekly problem-solving 

workshops with questions. In addition, Tracey appreciated Vince’s student-centered 

facilitation of the calculus workshops such as soliciting questions from students as 

well as circulating the classroom to offer guidance and support to problem-solving 

groups. Vince, thus, provided Tracey with the opportunity to learn from a mathe-

matics teacher in college who prioritized student learning and support much like 

Mr. Sosa did. Given the common use of teacher-centered lecture formats for math-

ematics teaching at the undergraduate level, Vince’s teaching approach allowed 

Tracey to continue receiving the academic and relational support from teachers that 

played a central role in her positive high school mathematics experiences. 

With a smaller Latin@ representation at the university compared to high 

school, Tracey felt as though Latin@s were lumped together as one homogeneous 

racial group as opposed to the appreciation of Latin@s’ cultural diversity in high 

school. She described how instead of valuing how “Hispanic culture had many 

branches,” her first year at the predominantly White university brought her to feel 

as though Latin@s as an entire group were positioned as: “You’re all together. 

You’re all here.” This lack of acknowledged within-group variation in college, as a 

result, contributed to her feelings of being subjected to racial judgments framed by 

the discourse of Latin@s not being good at mathematics. 

For example, Tracey contrasted this with her experience of attending a pre-

dominantly Latin@ high school where she felt judged more for being a girl and less 

for being Latin@. She described: “There wasn’t any really degrading on my intel-

lectual skills based on my race because we were all the same race. It was more 

based on ‘cause I was a girl.” To illustrate, Tracey reflected on her university peers’ 

surprised reactions upon learning that she was a mathematics major and then pro-

ceeding to ask about her ethnicity and performance in mathematics: 

 
When I came here [to the university], it was really weird when people would ask me, 

“What major are you?” and I’d say, “Oh, I’m thinking of math.” “Oh! Math?! Really? 

Wow! I wouldn’t have expected that.” A good amount of people ask me, following up 

the question of “What major are you?” with “Where are you from?”…. And I’d say, 

“Oh I’m Cuban.” “Oh you’re Cuban. Oh, alright. That’s cool. Alright, so how are you 

doing in math?” Alright, I guess they just wanted to know where I was from? (Individ-

ual Interview) 

 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       109 

Tracey was perplexed by the logic behind others’ “awkward follow-up question” 

regarding her ethnicity after sharing that she was a mathematics major. However, 

she also acknowledged being more aware with time of how racialized ideas of 

mathematics ability including Latin@s not being good at mathematics contributed 

to such interpersonal exchanges at the university. Tracey’s reflections on others’ 

reactions to her being a mathematics major, thus, capture her heightened awareness 

of her high school and university as spaces racialized in different ways that in turn 

shaped others’ potentially negative judgments of her mathematics ability in college 

and lack thereof in high school. 

Tracey, however, found herself questioning if she wanted to continue pursu-

ing a mathematics major after her first exam in second-semester calculus. She de-

scribed how her efforts such as attending lectures, contacting instructors for extra 

help, and completing homework assignments did not translate into the grades that 

she expected. During this discouraging experience, Tracey reached out to advanced 

peers pursuing a mathematics major for advice on handling this situation: 

 
I spoke to different people who I’ve met along the way, who are also math majors, and 

have gone through this and they all say that…calc 2 is the hardest math. “You just have 

to stick through, hold your head high, get through it, and after calc 2, you’ll make it.” 

And it really helped to have peers say: “You know, every single person in the universe 

struggles with calc 2. It’s hard, it’s really hard. Once you pass that milestone, it gets 

better.” (Individual Interview)  

 

Although this peer support was not content-specific such as recommended studying 

or test-taking strategies, it provided Tracey with closure in not feeling alone in her 

situation with second-semester calculus. Tracey’s connections with more advanced 

peers at the university, thus, not only allowed her to maintain a peer study network 

for mathematics in college, but also provided emotional support and affirmation of 

the struggles that come with being a mathematics major.  

 

Cross-Case Analysis of Counter-Stories 
  

Looking across these two counter-stories, we see the variation in how Lauren 

and Tracey invoked and negotiated discourses related to mathematics ability and 

STEM higher education to make meaning of the intersectionality of their experi-

ences as Latin@ women in mathematics. I organize the following cross-case analy-

sis by the most dominant discourses present in their counter-stories: (a) mathemat-

ics ability is innate, (b) women and Latin@s are not good at mathematics, (c) Lat-

in@ women are underrepresented in STEM, and (d) Latin@ women become young 

mothers and wives instead of college students. Insights into how the two Latin@ 

women encountered them institutionally and interpersonally are also discussed. Fi-

nally, in the analysis, I explore strategies that Lauren and Tracey adopted to navi-

gate these discourses and advance their respective mathematical pursuits. 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       110 

Mathematics ability is innate. Lauren and Tracey, in different ways, engaged 

the discourse of mathematics ability as innate. For example, Lauren saw herself as 

being naturally talented in mathematics that allowed her to pay less attention during 

high school mathematics courses, feel as though the subject came easier to her than 

others, build stronger relationships with teachers, and work well with peers at simi-

lar levels of ability. Such innateness of ability, however, ran counter to Lauren’s 

acknowledgement that her mathematics success was largely contingent on receiving 

high-quality instruction and support from her teachers in high school and college. 

In contrast, Tracey challenged the innateness discourse after a turning point in 

her mathematics experience—namely, receiving her first low grade of C in high 

school. Mathematics ability was what allowed Tracey to feel “intellectually smart” 

and confident, but her overconfidence in Algebra II Honors brought her to appreci-

ate that mathematics success was less about natural talent and more about hard 

work and effort. This discourse continued to inform Tracey’s approach to future 

mathematics courses including AP Calculus where she and fellow underrepresented 

Latin@ girls engaged in “gender battles” to collectively disprove notions of men 

being better at mathematics than women. 

Lauren’s and Tracey’s respective ways of engaging the discourse of innate 

mathematics ability captures the pressures of academic success that can be placed 

on students especially Latin@ women and other populations underrepresented and 

marginalized in mathematics. In Lauren’s counter-story, we observe the impact that 

high-quality teaching can have in disrupting such notions of innate ability often at-

tributed to men, Whites, and Asian American students who hold higher rates of 

achievement and representation in mathematics within the United States. Tracey’s 

reflections on her low grade in Algebra II Honors and underrepresentation in AP 

Calculus point to systemic issues of underachievement and underrepresentation 

among women and racially minoritized groups in mathematics. When innateness of 

mathematics ability—a discourse framed by colorblind and gender-blind ideolo-

gies—is coupled with these systemic issues, women’s and racially minoritized 

groups’ underachievement and underrepresentation come to be explained as these 

groups being inherently deficient of potential for mathematics success (Battey & 

Leyva, 2016, this issue; Martin, 2009, 2013; Mendick, 2006). 

Thus, a gendered and racialized hierarchy of mathematics ability is produced. 

Innateness of ability operates as a colorblind and gender-blind way of discussing 

this racialized and gendered hierarchy. It can bring fellow members of marginalized 

groups to position each other as being more or less Latin@ and more or less femi-

nine based on perceived mathematics ability (Mendick, 2006; Stinson, 2008). This 

positioning is particularly oppressive for Latin@ women as an underrepresented 

group in mathematics in navigating gendered and racialized judgments of ability 

that bring their success to be deemed unexpected and transgressive. An example of 

this positioning was observed when Lauren discussed how Latin@ boys in high 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       111 

school engaged in gendered peer policing premised on the notion that it is not nor-

mal for a girl and “especially a Latina girl” to be good at mathematics. 

Women and Latin@s are not good at mathematics. Lauren and Tracey also 

engaged discourses of women and Latin@s not being good at mathematics. It is 

important to note that the ways in which Lauren and Tracey perceived schools, 

classrooms, and other institutional spaces as gendered and racialized shaped the 

level of saliency of these discourses throughout their experiences (Moore, 2008; 

Stinson, 2008). Lauren, for instance, described feeling more conscious of the “gen-

der thing” and women’s underrepresentation in STEM at the university than in high 

school. She saw women’s representation in her high school mathematics faculty as 

an implicit way of communicating to students, especially boys, that “a female can 

do it [mathematics] too” and thus challenging gendered discourses in mathematics.  

Tracey felt her mathematics ability subject to scrutiny in relation to her gen-

der identity at her predominantly Latin@ high school, but judged more so racially 

at the predominantly White university. The discourse of girls being less smart and 

good at mathematics than boys shaped the competitive atmosphere of Tracey’s AP 

Calculus classroom with the outnumbered Latin@ girls engaged in “gender battles” 

over top spots in the class with boy classmates. At the university, Tracey felt her 

shared pursuits of a mathematics major to be received with skepticism and surprise 

including an “awkward follow-up question” about her racial background. This con-

trasted with Tracey’s high school experience where “there wasn’t really a discour-

agement…on race and mathematics” in light of being in a predominantly Latin@ 

town. Lauren’s and Tracey’s counter-stories, thus, capture how consciousness of 

their social identities varied across contexts and thus led to different positionings of 

themselves and others along the hierarchy of mathematics ability over time. 

An evolving theme across Lauren’s and Tracey’s engagements with discours-

es of women and Latin@s not being good at mathematics is how these gendered 

and racial discourses shaped the nature of instruction and teacher-student relation-

ships in high school and college mathematics (Battey, 2013; Battey, Neal, Leyva, & 

Adams-Wiggins, 2016). Both Latin@ women described how their mathematics 

success in high school was largely attributed to establishing positive, supportive 

relationships with teachers who held high academic expectations of them and fel-

low students in alignment with notions of culturally responsive pedagogy in urban 

schools (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995). High school mathematics teaching, 

therefore, provided them with opportunities to be academically challenged and sup-

ported in ways that were affirming of their identities as Latin@ women. 

During their first year at the university, Lauren and Tracey reconsidered their 

continued pursuits of a computer science and mathematics major respectively. They 

raised concerns about feeling disconnected from their mathematics professors’ 

teaching approaches and seeing their efforts not translate into better grades. These 

reflections raise questions about the shift in mathematics teaching and learning ex-



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       112 

periences between high school and college. Lauren’s and Tracey’s counter-stories 

warrant our analytical considerations of the extent to which undergraduate mathe-

matics education in predominantly White universities and other higher education 

institutions sustains forms of cultural and gender responsiveness that the Latin@ 

women received during high school (Jett, 2013; Rodd & Bartholomew, 2006; Stin-

son, 2016). Such forms of support in mathematics teaching better attend to the in-

tersectionality of experiences for underrepresented and marginalized populations 

including Latin@ women and thus broaden students’ opportunities to co-construct 

positive academic and social identities across the P–16 mathematics pipeline. 

Latin@ women are an underrepresented group in STEM. Lauren and Tracey 

raised the discourse of Latin@ women being an underrepresented group in STEM. 

Lauren interpreted statistics of Latin@ women as the most underrepresented group 

in STEM as a reflection of the minimal encouragement and mentorship that they 

receive to pursue STEM education and careers—a departure from deficit notions of 

Latin@ women inherently not being good at mathematics. She engaged the dis-

course of Latin@ women’s underrepresentation to make meaning of why she went 

on to pursue higher education in STEM. Lauren distinguished her situation of being 

supported by her family to major in a mathematics-intensive field like computer 

science from that of other Latin@ women whose families may not have “taught 

[them] that they can do math” or that STEM was a viable career pathway for them. 

Her STEM pursuits also allowed Lauren to serve as a role model for her younger 

relatives to sustain such family encouragement. 

Tracey similarly invoked the discourse of Latin@ women’s underrepresenta-

tion in STEM when reflecting on her experience as one of the four Latin@ girls in 

her AP Calculus course. She explained that because they “stuck together,” she and 

her fellow Latin@ girl classmates were successful in the course and their first year 

at the university. This sense of collectivism was powerful because Tracey and her 

peers understood each other’s similar situations as not only being underrepresented 

in the AP Calculus classroom, but also dealing with gendered cultural pressures of 

becoming young mothers and wives rather being good in mathematics and pursuing 

higher education. This supportive peer network motivated Tracey and her Latin@ 

girl classmates to challenge discourses that marginalize Latin@ women’s opportu-

nities in STEM throughout the AP Calculus course and into college. 

Lauren’s and Tracey’s counter-stories, thus, illustrate how they respectively 

took up the discourse of Latin@ women’s underrepresentation to mobilize change 

through their STEM higher education. In addition, they saw their pursuits of math-

ematics-intensive majors serving as opportunities to sustain the interpersonal en-

couragement from family (in Lauren’s case) and peers (in Tracey’s case) that large-

ly influenced their academic and professional endeavors in STEM. The potentially 

marginalizing influence of the underrepresentation discourse, therefore, instead 

stimulated the Latin@ women’s adoption of success-oriented beliefs of STEM edu-



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       113 

cation as an opportunity to become role models for future generations of Latin@ 

women as well as strategies like building peer networks for navigating the socially 

exclusionary landscape of mathematics and STEM education more broadly. 

Latin@ women become young mothers and wives instead of college students. 

The discourse of Latin@ women expected to become young mothers and wives ra-

ther than being college-bound emerged across Lauren’s and Tracey’s counter-

stories. The Latin@ women were both subjected to the discourse through peer re-

marks in high school about taking care of children, returning to the kitchen, and get-

ting married rather than doing mathematics and pursuing a college degree. Lauren 

and Tracey saw such peer policing as a reflection of traditional cultural values of a 

gendered division of labor taken up in Latin@ households. 

While Lauren was aware of such gendered cultural expectations that Latin@ 

women “stayed at home” instead of working or studying, she reflected on how her 

family did not perpetuate such values and instead encouraged her to “break that tra-

dition” by pursuing a college education. Although Lauren was a first-generation 

college student, she was pushed less toward marriage and child rearing than Tracey 

whose mother would have been the first family member to complete a college de-

gree in the United States. Tracey, however, discussed how her grandmother fre-

quently criticized her for not thinking about marriage and raising children instead of 

applying to and attending college. Her mother also served as a frame of reference of 

what can happen to a Latin@ woman when “culture catches up” to her and derails 

her STEM career pursuits. As a result, Tracey viewed returning as a high school 

mathematics teacher in her hometown as an opportunity to pick up where her moth-

er left off in her STEM career development. This returning was also a way for her 

to encourage younger generations of Latin@ girls to “beat the culture” and not fall 

victim to discourses that steer them away from applying their mathematics ability 

and interests. These different experiences raise considerations of the influence of 

immigration in the Latin@ women’s negotiations of family expectations and STEM 

higher education with the presence of recently immigrated family members con-

tributing to a stronger salience of gendered cultural discourses at home. 

Despite the varying influence of the discourse about Latin@ women as young 

mothers and wives, it is important to note how Lauren and Tracey both leveraged 

family-oriented motivations of pursuing mathematics-intensive majors to directly 

challenge the discourse. What is a potentially marginalizing discourse that stems 

from traditional Latin@ family values, therefore, was met with the Latin@ wom-

en’s empowering strategies of resistance for the advancement of their family situa-

tions. This resistance illustrates how the two Latin@ women’s familismo (Marín & 

Marín, 1991; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 1995), or sense of loyalty and re-

sponsibility to the Latin@ family unit, played a critical role in their motivations to 

excel in mathematics while negotiating STEM higher education with family expec-

tations. 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       114 

Social class also shaped Lauren’s and Tracey’s perspectives on the im-

portance of pursuing mathematics-intensive majors and STEM careers as Latin@ 

women. Lauren set herself apart from the “really disappointing” complacency aca-

demically and professionally among her Latin@ older cousins who did not pursue 

higher education. In doing so, she described how serving as a role model for her 

cousins as a college graduate in STEM would help them realize how they can also 

“live a life with a degree and more comfortably.” Tracey alluded to her family’s 

financial struggle with her mother taking an unenjoyable, low-paying job as the sole 

household contributor. She perceived such financial struggle to be a consequence of 

her mother falling victim to the gendered cultural expectations of becoming a 

young mother as a Latin@ woman. Tracey draws on this awareness to stimulate her 

mathematical pursuits as a pathway for avoiding a similar situation and “carry[ing] 

on [her] mom’s legacy” as a future high school mathematics teacher. Immigration 

and class, therefore, are closely tied to the development of Latin@ family values 

such as maintaining cultural integrity and pursuing a college education for aims of 

social mobility in the United States. The interplay of such family influences with 

the discourses of mathematics ability and STEM representation results in varying 

intersectionalities of experience for the Latin@ women like Lauren and Tracey. 

 
Discussion and Implications 

 

In this study, I presented cases of two Latin@ college women’s mathematics 

experiences with analytical attention to how they navigated discourses of mathe-

matics ability and STEM higher education encountered institutionally and interper-

sonally. The intersectional analysis of Lauren’s and Tracey’s counter-stories details 

the complexity of how they made meaning of their experiences as mathematics stu-

dents and negotiated their identities as Latin@ women with mathematics success 

and pursuits of STEM higher education (Esmonde et al., 2009; Martin, 2009). More 

specifically, the analytical construction of their counter-stories allowed for detailing 

the variation between two Latin@ women’s mathematics experiences and adopted 

strategies in managing discourses of ability and underrepresentation mapping onto 

empowerment, resilience, and success (Bowleg, 2008). 

By exploring gender as socially constructed, this work departs from sex-

based, binary analyses comparing achievement and participation differences be-

tween women and men in mathematics and thus allowed for capturing within-group 

variation of experience particularly among Latin@ women (Leyva, in press; 

Mendick, 2006). The analytical foregrounding of Lauren’s and Tracey’s gendered 

experiences shaped by other social influences including race, class, and immigra-

tion advances work in mathematics education that, by and large, has left intersec-

tionality of experience, especially among women of color, implicit (Leyva, in 

press). The poststructural analysis documents the emergent ways in which the two 



 

 

 

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Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       115 

Latin@ women were discursively gendered as mathematics students while negotiat-

ing marginalizing perspectives of mathematics ability and sense of familismo. 

The analysis generated nuanced understandings of what it means to be a Lat-

in@ woman studying mathematics as well as how educational structures and stake-

holders can more effectively advance educational equity for Latin@ women and 

other marginalized groups in P–16 mathematics. For example, the high school-to-

college transition was a challenging experience that came with pedagogical and re-

lational shifts in mathematics teaching that resulted in both Lauren’s and Tracey’s 

reconsiderations of mathematics-intensive STEM majors. Both Lauren and Tracey 

alluded to gender-affirming and culturally responsive moments in high school 

mathematics that played a major role in their pre-college interests and academic 

success. Such social support and teacher–student connections, however, were min-

imally experienced at the university with the Latin@ women finding themselves in 

positions of needing to “teach themselves” and re-building peer networks on their 

own. This corroborates findings from extant research in STEM higher education 

that identified institutional selectivity, or attending research-intensive colleges or 

universities that hold teaching at a lower priority for faculty, as a negative statistical 

predictor of STEM persistence for women of color (Espinosa, 2011).  

Furthermore, findings from this study echo resounding calls for mathematics 

teaching responsive to gender, racial, and other forms of diversity at the undergrad-

uate level (Jett, 2013; Rodd & Bartholomew, 2006; Stinson, 2016). Lauren’s and 

Tracey’s counter-stories, therefore, call into question the extent to which the cou-

pling of academic and social support critical to their construction of positive math-

ematics identities as Latin@ women in high school is sustained and valued in un-

dergraduate mathematics education—a space largely shaped by gendered and racial 

discourses of mathematics ability—especially at predominantly White institutions 

(McGee & Martin, 2011; Mendick, 2006; Shah, in press). 

Thus, P–16 mathematics teachers play an important role in being aware of 

deficit discourses and supporting marginalized student populations, including Lat-

in@ women, in successfully navigating them to broaden opportunities for mathe-

matics success. This support is especially important at the undergraduate level with 

entry-level mathematics courses like calculus documented as a filter resulting in 

attrition of STEM majors (Chen, 2013; Rasmussen, Marrongelle, & Borba, 2014). 

This filtering was evidenced in Lauren’s and Tracey’s reconsiderations of their 

mathematics-intensive majors by first- and second-semester calculus respectively. 

Despite these discourses’ marginalizing influences and minimal social support 

available to navigate them in undergraduate mathematics, Lauren’s and Tracey’s 

counter-stories illustrate the two Latin@ women’s development of success-oriented 

beliefs and strategies in negotiating these discourses with their social identities. It is 

important to note how the two Latin@ women’s family- and community-related 

motivations to seek higher education in mathematics-intensive STEM areas were 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       116 

largely influenced by mathematics teaching, particularly in high school, that 

brought them to see themselves as being “good at math.” Therefore, I argue that P–

12 STEM education should be a critical area of focus in contemporary calls and ini-

tiatives for broadening participation in STEM among underrepresented populations. 

A mathematics or other STEM degree is often a prerequisite in being certified as a 

P–12 mathematics teacher. Increasing retention rates in undergraduate mathematics 

and other mathematics-intensive STEM areas, thus, would further diversify the P–

12 teaching force and connect underrepresented students with teachers who look 

like them and who can relate to their personal experiences in dealing with deficit 

discourses in mathematics and STEM broadly. This diversifying is important as 

Lauren and Tracey discussed the influence of seeking support from as well as build-

ing networks with fellow women and Latin@s, but they were mostly family mem-

bers and peers as opposed to mathematics or STEM educators. 

Findings from this study corroborate those from extant work in urban mathe-

matics education on the importance of peer networks in the mathematics success of 

students of color (Oppland-Cordell, 2014; Treisman, 1992; Walker, 2006). Lauren 

and Tracey either sought academic support from peers at the university or sustained 

peer networks from their home communities that served as resources for their suc-

cess in high school and college mathematics. Tracey, in particular, commented on 

how maintaining peer connections from high school were both academically sup-

portive and socially empowering. However, such ties to peer networks are often 

severed for women and students of color once they start their first year of college, 

thus leaving them with the responsibility of re-building such networks on their own 

for their continued success in mathematics. Lauren’s and Tracey’s abilities to seek, 

establish, and sustain peer networks in mathematics challenge notions that the abil-

ity to form such networks is inherently missing among students of color (Treisman, 

1992). More importantly, this highlights the responsibility that colleges and univer-

sities, especially predominantly White institutions, have in supporting marginalized 

students’ peer network development for academic and social support in STEM. 

Such support includes the management of deficit discourses and feelings of un-

derrepresentation and as well as navigating institutional spaces for undergraduate 

STEM success (McGee & Martin, 2011). 

A limitation of this study is the lack of observations of the two Latin@ wom-

en across undergraduate mathematics classrooms. Ethnographic observations and 

field notes would complement their reflections of mathematics as a socially exclu-

sionary space in terms of their engagement with content, peers, and instructors at 

the university. There is analytical space for future research that examines the in-

structional and relational spaces of undergraduate STEM education including math-

ematics classrooms to document how opportunities for mathematics learning are 

promoted or hindered for marginalized populations including Latin@ women. Alt-

hough there exist significant issues related to Latin@ students’ experiences in P–12 



 

 

 

Leyva                                                      Latin@ College Women and Mathematics 

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 9, No. 2                       117 

mathematics, these issues are only recently becoming part of the undergraduate 

mathematics conversation. Insights from this study and those that follow can inform 

professional development for undergraduate mathematics departments and mathe-

matics educators as they work to create academic and social supports that sustain 

opportunities for students of color like Lauren and Tracey to continue to be success-

ful in their higher STEM education.  

 
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