The author comes across as someone who's looking to find fault so I wouldn't be surprised if she read too much in to this (then again I wouldn't be surprised if she was spot on). I can certainly see people having the same reaction in this interview to men.
I'm a male and I've given this response before when someone asked me "have you read about X?" In turn, they gave a brief background because they weren't aware of the full scope of my knowledge on the subject.
If instead I had said: "Yes, I've worked on many projects involving X and I wrote a dissertation on it," then there would be no need for explanation.
It seems more like inexperience with the other gender and conflating assumptions in the workplace.
However, I think the issue was laughing off the affirmative response. Why would you laugh at the response unless you don't believe someone?
Did they laugh off your affirmative answer?
It's a way to try and break the awkwardness of just a one-word answer. We can't tell the tone this man had, or how the author perceived that tone, just from the writing, but I like to use Hanlon's razor liberally.
I think it's a moot point using only one datum, especially one as subjective as experience, in argument though.
I don't think there is any data to back this up and using induction is fair here.
However, if we're labeling "CEOs" as CEOs who are also in-charge of large (100M Cap) companies, than we would need some formal data.