[cycrutchfield]

All it would require is just that the standard deviation for math ability in men (whether by nature or nurture, I am making no judgment either way) is only very slightly higher than for women. Since we are looking at the tail of the distribution, the result would not be surprising.

[77pt77]

That hypothesis got Larry Summers in a lot of trouble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_b...

[tzs]

As Helena Cronin noted of men: "more dumbbells but more Nobels" [1].

[1] https://www.edge.org/annual-question/2008/response/10670

[yorwba]

I once did some calculations to explore the expected effect of that difference in standard deviation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524

I'm on my phone right now and can't redo it for the gender ratio of Fields medalists, but I expect that the effect would cover most of the difference, since the cutoff for the award does seem quite high.