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by yummyfajitas 5238 days ago
...their mental abilities are more or less identical.

No. The evidence suggests that Larry Summers was right, namely that men have a higher variance than women, though means are close to equal.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2889145

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941

Seriously, the difference in math test scores between male and female students in different countries tracks sexual discrimination...

Yes - the more gender equity you have, the better boys do relative to girls. (The scores of both genders improve with gender equity, but boy's scores improve more.)

http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf

This document also shows that the greater male variance is mostly invariant across cultures.