I don't believe that there's ever been a law against woman picking up a paint brush and painting, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm also sure that if a woman wanted to discover the light bulb, she could. Although you could argue that with the lack of education women got in comparison to men at the time.
And whether women were aloud to do these things or not, men still did do them. Meaning that being male doesn't stop you from being able to achieve these things, meaning that gender doesn't have anything to do with how good you are as a chef or scientist and doesn't determine how smart you are which was the point I was trying to make.