I just want to agree 100% with what interjection (I think it was you…) said about how girls are taught Torah in a fluffy way. I take parsha class every Friday. We are taught divrei Torah- depending on whether the teacher remembers, sometimes we get the sources. Next week, I’m having a test. We will basically have to spit back all of the information from these divrei Torah. I’ve had class like this basically every year since at latest the middle of elementary school.
This is NOT to say anything negative about my parsha teacher, an extremely sweet and very intelligent woman. It has much more to do with the attitude that makes this considered “intellectual” learning. It is to a much greater extent spoonfeeding.
I’m learning a mussar sefer in a chabura and it kind of alarms me how much people say things like, “I was reading this great book by popular-rabbi-of-the-month and it said this” with absolutely no critical thinking whatsoever. The name of the book is irrelevant even, sometimes- just the fact that a publishing company thought fit to print it seems to be enough.
While I fully accept that there are people who find this sort of learning fulfilling, there are many, including myself and some of my friends, who feel chafed. To me, for example, one of my favorite classes is halacha, which is, ironically, the closest we get to gemara. We learn the practical halachos, but we also learn about machlekos haposkim, we learn about the logic behind various rulings, and we use our critical thinking skills to try to understand.
So, golfer, I really do think that, as interjection said, it is conditioning. Plenty of women, if given the opportunity, would jump at the kind of learning that you say they are incapable of. True, men’s and women’s brains are different, but I disagree as far as this application.