Agreed, not implausible. Sorry for downvote. Actually after having thought about this a bit, there are many possibilities.
One (the one you seem to be in favor of) is that due to higher hiring standards even if the average abilities are similar, after the hiring filter average woman is more skilled than the average man.
Another is that (just like it was described in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988086) you have lower standards for women than for men so that you cut incompetent women some slack.
Yet another is that while the averages are similar, men are much more varying in their abilities, so that both ends of spectrum (outstanding competence and extreme incompetence) are dominated by men.
Etc. There can be a lot of explanations besides the bias in hiring and without some empirical evidence it is difficult to choose.
FWIW I've met my share of incompetent women. But I'm not US-based, and that might explain the difference.
One (the one you seem to be in favor of) is that due to higher hiring standards even if the average abilities are similar, after the hiring filter average woman is more skilled than the average man.
Another is that (just like it was described in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988086) you have lower standards for women than for men so that you cut incompetent women some slack.
Yet another is that while the averages are similar, men are much more varying in their abilities, so that both ends of spectrum (outstanding competence and extreme incompetence) are dominated by men.
Etc. There can be a lot of explanations besides the bias in hiring and without some empirical evidence it is difficult to choose.
FWIW I've met my share of incompetent women. But I'm not US-based, and that might explain the difference.