This study examined the impact of hostile environments and stereotype threat on women's math performance. A hostile environment was created with a derogatory cartoon related to women's math ability. Stereotype threat was removed by informing women participants that "men and women perform equally" on the math test. Results showed that hostile environments and stereotype threat significantly interacted leading to differential math performance for number of math problems attempted and answered correctly. Additionally, women in hostile and stereotype threat conditions experienced differential emotional reactions during the math test. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical importance.Within both educational and occupational settings women are under-represented in fields that require high levels of mathematics (Eccles, 1987). Mathematics and related areas of study are consistently stereotyped as a masculine field and domain (Eccles et al., 1990;Leader, 1986). While women consist of half of the population they earn only 22 percent of the B.S. degrees, 13 percent of Ph.D.s and only hold 10 percent of the jobs in math, physical science, and engineering (Steele, 1997). Among college math majors, women leave the field at a rate two and a half times that of their male counterparts. Math has been considered to be a "critical filter" that keeps women out of science and computer careers (Sherman, 1982). Since mathematics is a critical factor in many different occupations and in achieving higher paying, prestigious positions, women are put at an economic and academic disadvantage by such stereotypes .There has been a multitude of empirical research examining gender differences in mathematical performance. Although there is a discrepancy among research studies regarding the actual size of the gender differences in mathematical performance, the general opinion of the field is that women tend to perform lower than males . A meta-analysis of 100 studies by Hyde and colleagues (1990) found that the mean effect size is significant but small, d = .20. The decrease in women's mathematical performance, relative to their male counterparts, appears during the high school years and continues through college and adulthood . The differences were most pronounced on advanced problem solving tasks, not in computational abilities or in the conceptual understanding of mathematics.Women tend to have slightly more negative attitudes towards mathematics than