At the school level, in the physical sciences area, females are not taking up science in the same ratio as males. Now, thats a fact, I don't know how to fix it. Boys and girls are wired up differently. Nature made it that way, and we have to accommodate it. In first year mathematics the gender ratio is skewed by the number of engineering students, who don't have a good gender balance, but in the science-based areas, numbers are balanced.
Female students tend to work hardest, they're more conscientious.
What I perceive is that the female students lack that aggression that appears to be in male students, and sometimes in attacking a problem, in solving a convergent problem, you need a sort of mental aggression to do that. However, many other disciplines require divergent solutions, and males tend to do less well at those, and I think that has to do with the natural make up. I'm not making a value judgment here, except that my discipline tends to require convergent solutions. Funnily enough, our best tutors are females, because they have an empathy with students - they understand why students don't understand, and that is very valuable. Mathematics is a universal language, independent of culture - the curriculum doesn't discriminate against different cultures.