According to studies males are statistically better with abstract reasoning/tasks, spatial awareness tasks and so on, which math relates to.
But I would consider that a potential aptitude probably based on testosterone and say that hormone's supposed effect of enabling concentration on specific tasks more easily, not an inherent ability in all males due to a male brain. I know males who utterly suck at math, and females who don't - is it due to the hormones milling around in their bodies and not the sex of their brain? I've seen threads around here talking about how HRT often brings mental changes in line with gender expectations from those kinds of stats.
I don't have a genetic male brain, but I can read a map like nobody's business, and spatial tasks are fairly easy for me. And once I learned the rules of math properly it's like a cookbook - you can't go wrong, it's simple enough if you have the formula - all the more simple for being a subject that has absolutely correct or incorrect answers with no inbetweens and plenty of reliable patterns or methods. In that sense if the teaching is sound, there's nobody who should struggle with it unless there are some learning difficulties preventing it. I've always found science subjects to be almost self-explanatory. It's not some inherent ability to pick up stuff at the drop of a hat or I wouldn't have had to work at the math. But the fact I could work at the math and become good shows there's really no barrier.
Ever heard that stereotype that East Asians (as in Chinese, Koreans, Japanese etc.) are all great at math? Oddly enough most of the East Asians I know are - including the women. I don't think that's because East Asians have brains that are genetically better suited for abstract reasoning. I honestly think the secret is in how they learn and how they're taught. Schooling systems are fairly uniform within countries with the majority of schools government funded and supervised, teaching in a specific manner. I know after spending some time abroad that all the E. Asian schools I was interested in were teaching math, languages and art in such a way that most of the students coming out were much better on average at all of these than the ones in the UK I went to, and the quality of the art was also on average more accomplished, and a lot of it seems to be down to attitude, how seriously kids take their education and so on. Some students are naturally more gifted at picking up subjects than others, but imo it has to be the method, for the most part, and perhaps the way students apply themselves/parental expectations/culture etc.
I suspect in the UK the perceived importance of education is less, parental expectations are in general lower, (testing/competition is definitely more relaxed than in E. Asian schools) and there's been a significant dumbing-down of the subject of math in UK schools over the last 50 yrs. I found an old C.S.E. book from my dad's stint in the same school I attended years later and the difficulty of the C.S.E. material compared to that in my G.C.S.E blew my mind. The fact kids were still finding math difficult at the level in my time at the same school points in my view to poorer teaching and a far more lax attitude to the subject. Then there's the fact that a kid like me who was continuously crap at math until forced to do better would have just continued to suck at it if not for my parents refusing to allow the "streaming system" to condemn me to a naff grade.
