Abstract
<jats:p>This study aims to investigate how prospective teachers position mathematics within the context of gender, through which rationales and discourse patterns they explain these positionings, and how these perceptions are shaped by sources such as family, school, and curriculum. The study was designed as a basic qualitative study and conducted with 69 prospective mathematics teachers enrolled at a state university in Türkiye. Data were collected through an open-ended written interview form and analyzed using content analysis. The findings revealed a clear tension between individual and societal dimensions. In the individual dimension, prospective teachers mostly positioned mathematics as a gender-neutral field, whereas in the societal dimension it was largely described as a field associated with men. Some participants rejected the idea that mathematics belongs to one gender, but their explanations still included implicit assumptions about differences between women and men.</jats:p>