In Switzerland and France, girls and women face multiple challenges that compromise their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and consequently their careers, wherein they account for less than a third of employees globally with the exception of biology. The gender stereotypes in STEM resonate with a societal representational system and fuel discrimination strategies that specifically exclude girls and women from science. The lack of success of incentives for girls in science invites us to re-examine the way in which these disciplines are taught at the primary level. In this text, I argue that putting science back into mainstream culture could be a way to make it more gender-neutral and close the gender gap in STEM.