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Study of 1.6 Million Grades Shows Little Gender Difference in Math and Science at School (theconversation.com)
A study of school grades of more than 1.6 million students shows that girls and boys perform similarly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. From a report: The research, published today in Nature Communications, also shows that girls do better than boys in non-STEM subjects. Our results provide evidence that large gaps in the representation of women in STEM careers later in life are not due to differences in academic performance. One explanation for gender imbalance in STEM is the "variability hypothesis." This is the idea that gender gaps are much larger at the tails of the distribution -- among the highest and lowest performers -- than in the middle.
There is supporting evidence for your hypothesis:
http://journals.sagepub.com/do...
I think the explanation that high-achieving women tend to be proficient in both verbal and math abilities while men are more likely to be proficient primarily in math abilities is pretty compelling. It's possible that preference is the primary driver, but I'm not sure you can really separate preference and ability so cleanly.
Look at the gender breakdown of medical specialties here:
https://wire.ama-assn.org/educ...
Notice how men tend to gravitate toward roles that involve less human interaction? Surgery, Anesthesiology, Radiology. There's no shame in admitting that women might be simultaneously as good as men at Math, but better, or at least more likely to enjoy, roles that require high levels of verbal aptitude as well.