> Citation needed

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-some-sig...

> “[That previous study] finds no average difference in intelligence, but males were more variable than females,” Ritchie says. “This is why our finding that male participants’ brains were, in most measures, more variable than female participants’ brains is so interesting. It fits with a lot of other evidence that seems to point toward males being more variable physically and mentally.”

So if you’re looking for outliers (such as a chess prodigee), you are more likely to find them in the male population than in the female population.

Your explanation is not simpler by any stretch, it just spares you some cognitive dissonance.