"The whole system is set up to discourage girls from being overly competitive, especially against males, and a true man, by definition, is somebody who wants to win at all costs," said Ms. Kane, a sociologist.

In February 2010 Maariv has reported that the Tel Aviv municipality had instituted an official, government-sponsored counseling program to discourage Jewish girls from dating and marrying Arab boys.

The challenge is to remove the obstacles that discourage girls and women from getting involved in designing and inventing technology.

As the report indicates, "gender bias undermines girls' self-esteem and discourages girls from courses of study such as math and science."

One of the advantages of worming, we discovered early on, was that it discouraged little girls from wanting to go fishing with us.

When we got to be sixteen, however, we learned that it also discouraged big girls from wanting to go fishing with us.

He discouraged girls, raised the entrance age to sixteen and introduced an entrance examination.

Issues like hunger and inadequate housing coupled with lack of facilities and the distance to get to them discouraged young black South African girls from playing the sport.

The fair-testing center maintains that these standardized tests are biased against women and that awarding scholarships without taking into account other academic measures like grades further discourages girls from entering the sciences.

The Girls Math and Science Program (GMSP) is committed to the elimination of barriers that discourage girls from becoming full participants in the science and technology fields.