Great point, knute! And cricket, I agree, it's not only gender, but temperament in general. And, I'd add, cognitive style.
I had a student who took 45 minutes to complete a WISC quantitative reasoning subtest that normally is done in about 5-7 minutes, but got nearly all of them correct. (Unfortunately, that task is timed, so many of these correct responses were obtained for their clinical interpretative value only, and not for the formal scores.) One of the factors was that even after identifying the correct response, they went back to confirm that all other options on the multiple-choice items were definitely not correct. Extremely high mathematical ability, headed to engineering school now, and likely to be very successful in that field.
Along the same lines, my SO was described as an eminently average student in every way all the way up to just before middle school, but ended up high school valedictorian, and went on to graduate from a premier STEM post-secondary institution. I would say the description of slow, deep thinker still applies.
