In the UK, Girls now achieve higher grades than boys in all subjects, including STEM, and at all age

The gap between girls and boys achieving A or A* in GCSEs was 9% in 2021: 30% of girls got the top marks vs 21% of boys. In Engineering, typically assumed to be a 'boys' subject, girls were ahed by over 32%.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: “such is the extent of girls’ lead over boys that one wonders if they just might be cleverer”.

I don’t think that women are necessarily smarter than men, but I think that it can appear that way for a number of reasons:

• Scientists at Newcastle University in the U.K. have discovered that girls tend to optimize brain connections earlier than boys. The researchers conclude that this may explain why females generally mature faster than males during childhood and adolescence. For this reason, I think that females tend to perform better academically in school as they are on the whole, more mature than boys are at that age and are therefore more focused on school work. This achievement at a young age can then lead to a pursuit of academia as they grow up.
• Girls are traditionally encouraged to go down a more traditional academic route after school as due to employment related misogyny, boys are sometimes more encouraged to enter into practical professions such as plumbing or bricklaying when they leave school where there is not always this same option for girls.
• The patriarchy means that girls have to be more self-motivated than boys to become successful
• The patriarchy also means that women learn to critique their surroundings and their actions more as we have to learn more about our society to not only survive but thrive and this enhances our social and emotional intelligence more than boys as they do not have to do this to the same extent

Women are socialised to be more emotionally intelligent than men are, so in that aspect of intelligence it's a yes from me. In all other aspects it's equal.