Where your argument and so called "empirical evidence" falls down is of course for most of history women have been treated as second class citizens, in ours and many other cultures! So women haven't had either the opportunities or equality to become leaders!
I think many people on here seem to have grasped the wrong end of a stick here concerning gender neutrality. In a recent BBC documentary they posed the question is the way we treat boys and girls in childhood the real reason we still haven't achieved true equality between men and women in adult...