It might be. What if there's a psychological barrier in place in a given society where a given group of people are repeatedly told either directly or implicitly through societal conventions inherited from previous centuries that they don't have the gift for science or maths in particular. In such a context, it would actually be beneficial to send "balanced teams" to such competitions so that it gives a mental boost (in the form of a symbol/token/role model that acts as a vessel) to perfectly capable people that just started with the handicap of being say "a woman", "a black" or "a redneck".
As such, reasoning in terms of "ability" is fundamentally flawed because "skills" are never innate, they're the result of a lot of work and positive circumstances in a given field and starting with a handicap from the get go just makes it so much harder that it's absolutely not a level ground.
As such, reasoning in terms of "ability" is fundamentally flawed because "skills" are never innate, they're the result of a lot of work and positive circumstances in a given field and starting with a handicap from the get go just makes it so much harder that it's absolutely not a level ground.