Work alone because girls discover, long before their elementary- school days are over, that doing better academically than the boys in their class is regarded as sex-inappropriate,they begin to develop the habit of working below their capacities. In time, this habit of Underachievement spreads to all areas of their lives in which their achievements are compared with those of boys. The "motive to avoid success,"so characteristic of many females in the American culture, is well established by the time girls reach the fifth or sixth grades of elementary school