I don’t believe it has ever been taken seriously, not least because competition is such a loose concept, that can be expressed, or not, in so many disparate ways.

However, I would point out that less than a century ago law and medicine were considered essentially a man’s domain, and very similar guesses about predisposition were made regarding the sex ratio in both law and medicine. Yep. If you believe the Romans and others they linked genius with the production of semen in young males. When you consider that the great discoveries of maths and science were nearly always made by men in their 20’s this makes some sense. When a field is a “man’s field”, that likely means the cultural landscape of the field is male dominated, with “old boy’s club” mentality. Or most women don’t go out…