it strikes me as obtuse to have gender gap discourse focus on extremes, ie questions like "can women reach the absolute top at (thing)"

statistically speaking the person at the top of anything is a rounding error and no one is permanently at the top. this focus on outliers neglects to consider that:

- competition and excellence is still meaningful and satisfying to see; anyone who is an enthusiast about a sport or hobby — and not just a tribalist — will be able to appreciate skill from various backgrounds and divisions. moreover, the sort of person who focuses solely on who is at the top is the sort of person who will never be remotely near the top at that thing.

- it's both realistic and healthy to simply want to be active and competitive in an activity in a self-sustaining way. a lot of people who are writers are simply concerned with making it as a writer. for the gender gap in various academic fields, it's myopic to talk about who is winning awards for the best in the field — a lot of people, women included, are simply happy to study it for a living.

- what will actually change the makeup of a field and how people live their lives doing it is how many people are able to do that thing professionally, not how many people can be the best. if being say 80th percentile at a skill is enough to do it professionally and you can change the gender makeup from 2% to 12%, this will significantly affect how people live their lives and engage with that field, on the ground, than it will if you keep the 2% figure but have a one member of your demographic ingroup ascend to the pantheon of elites.

in other words, it doesn't fucking matter if some woman chess player or tennis athlete would get pwned by the top 500 men. all categories of people from feminists to non-feminists to anti-feminists are guilty of this tendency, and not only is this wrongheaded, it's missing the bigger picture as well as the point itself.