"Girls are prepared to compete against girls when the subjects are thought of as male subjects ( science, technology) but not nearly so much against boys."
Any such statements are, of course, generalisations. I'm sure it's not difficult to find individual exceptions. The idea of "competing" never occurred to me either, at least not in a macho way. I remember enjoying, in the last year or two of primary school, the company of an equally brilliant maths student or two as we'd often have raced to compete the latest set of 30 problems. The same thing was useful in the middle years of High School, when a Korean and American joined my maths class. I think it will have been year ten when the Korean student just pipped me to the "best in school" certificate at some national competition or other and the teacher announcing the results made a stupid show of surprise that I wasn't first. But I was so pleased for him, he was brilliant. Wonder what he's doing now.
But anyway, that was a healthy competition, where I think we admired each other and lots of pats on the back, rather than some kind of irritation at not winning all the time.
OK that was a little further down memory lane than I was intending to go, but whatever.