But the arguments I see above just do not fly for me. Sure. On average girls and boys have equal ability in Maths but if you head out into the RHS you reach a point where high scoring boys outnumber high scoring girls. That is empirical fact and this gap has persisted despite oodles of encouragement to bring girls along.
We're not talking about the far end of the tail, though. The latest examples are about programming, and you don't need to be a math genius to write code. Most of those jobs only require an understanding of high school Algebra. If that's not average math ability, it's not far from it.
Actually I am talking about the Maths section of the SAT which is hardly far RH tail stuff.
Also, while it is true that one doesn't need to be very clever to 'code' as much as have the ability to think like a moron (the computer) one does need to be pretty sharp to code well.
A vast gulf separates being able to code well versus being able to type in a sequence of syntactically correct statements to get the job done (elegant simplicity versus brute force).
I have personally observed that gulf many times over the 30+ years I have worked in system development.
The truth is that many otherwise smart people cannot code (or architect systems) well.
