As far as Nobel prizes, you could point out that East Asia developed much later than the West and that therefore its hardly a surprise they would not have been at the cutting edge of science and thus would not have won nearly as many nobel prizes in the past. That said, I have no doubts as to the average intelligence of East Asians. They're quite intelligent. I cannot say the same about especially sub Saharan Africans or many middle eastern or central Asian muslims. Generation after generation of cousin marriage tends to drive down average IQ scores and result in far more birth defects.
As for women....which sex tends to be much more susceptible to social pressure and which sex is more likely to rebel and more likely to take big risks? Plenty of risk takers crash and burn but a few succeed brilliantly. Men tend to be at both ends of the spectrum in most things - both positive and negative - while women tend to cluster toward the middle.