So, in speculative summary: (a) women are discouraged to study maths or science. (b) science and the soft sciences (from biology on), as opposed to [good(*)] maths, relates to the real world which women deal with and are more concerned about, (c) maths learning and use seem to benefit from a particular sort of mental behaviour, and unsurprisingly these traits such as OCD or autism are more prevalent among men than women.
.................
Listen, I know you said it was just idle speculation, but!
Oh Ravi, this is just awful, I mean really dreadful.
Do you remember the discussion we had awhile back about women and chess? The consensus - from what I think we should call, borrowing a phrase Bitch can pedigree for us, the "feminism of fools" POV - was that since women aren't amongst the top tier of players, chess surely sucks. Which struck me, at the time (and even more so in retrospect) as some weird 1970s/80s lefty guy thing - rhetorical proof of feminist street cred by calling yourself, in so many words, a clueless, irresponsible asshole whose interests are unimportant.
Now here you are, applying, more or less, the same addled formula to math proficiency; you're pathologizing and putting a value judgment (using words such as "stupidity") on math dexterity to explain gender gaps.
Wow. Surprisingly, I really find this offensive and I'm rarely genuinely peeved by anything I read onlist.
.d.