Starting from the idea that even well-intentioned teachers often undermine girls' confidence in gender-sensitive areas of school curriculum, this paper outlines methods that might be used to enhance this confidence. It presents impressions from a 1-year observation of a class of 10-year-olds in a British school as part of a project called Group Work with Computers. The task observed involved Logo, a computer package whereby children program a "turtle" to move around a screen leaving a trail and thus drawing. Although the task was based on computing, a field seen as essentially male-dominated, girls showed gains in both confidence and achievement as the year progressed. Those positive results are attributed to the fact that: (1) emphasis was given to process rather than outcome; (2) unfamiliarity was tackled by letting children take as long as they needed over any task; (3) any competitiveness was side-lined by the emphasis on cooperation; and (4) although the teacher was to some degree the evaluator, the responsibility for evaluation was shared much more by the group. The paper concludes by noting that challenging work in subject areas traditionally seen as male domains could have positive effects for both girls and boys, and not only promote equal opportunities but also enhance learning. Contains eight references. (AA)