Let me offer another view as someone who has seen young men and women in the formative years of their lives as an elementary and high school teacher.
It’s true enough that looking at a group isn’t the same as looking at an individual, so summary judgments about women and men are sure to contain exceptions. I’ve taught some young men who would not be able to handle the physical effort needed for combat, and there have been a couple of young women who would do all right in the same situation. Generally, though, I’d have to say the writer is correct, and since I’m seeing the two sexes in their early years, it’s very clear that I’m looking at differences that are biological, not cultural.
At this point I can see my grandmother smacking her forehead and saying in that beautiful New York Brooklynese Jewish lilt, “For this you went to college?”
I’m constantly surrounded by the “culture is everything” crowd in academia, which I scrupulously ignore and undermine at every turn. Of course males and females are different. I see it every day in its most basic unmasked form. In order to maintain discipline in my class, I have to respond to boys and girls differently, or there is chaos, and no learning takes place.
Best of all, using Alinskyite methods for my own purposes, I regularly mock those claiming that men and women are alike except for culture and the way they were raised. It’s always good for a cheap laugh. As Alinsky would say, you can’t defend yourself against being mocked. And if they want to fire me, I have tenure.
I think you're describing a typical bell curve there. If the quality being graphed is "fitness for combat" (given a numerical score based on combining individual parameters), disproportionately more men will end up on the right side of the curve (the fit side), while women will populate the left (unfit) side. Men and women will be found in the middle area where the two peaks overlap.