I tend to agree with your analysis entirely. The research is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. For years many psychologists have believed that men were more intelligent. They've been looking for the evidence ever since. By now, one would suspect a more egaltarian approach.

Hormones account towards behaviors, so it would be nuts to contest the role of sexual hormones in behaviors as a rule.

However, I'd tend to downgrade their impact, and argue that same-sex imitation and opposite-sex differentiation account to as much if not more behaviors. Thus, I'd tend to dismiss sex-specific behaviors as self-fulfilling prophecies to a very large extent.

In many ways, Summers' words remind me of those of Gustave Lebon, who labelled females as frivolous and compared the brighter ones to monstrous nature oddities.

he could be right, just as well as he could be wrong. The fact that he's willing to go publicly advocate such a view without sound evidence (lets be clear here: there is evidence to support such a view; it is neither sound nor uncontested) leads me to believe this was indeed an egregious mistake; not just as a scientist, but as a member of the human species.

I still do not really understand why any individual would suspect such a position to be true, anyway. Why, do we have any reason to believe, that women are "less able" at a valued endeavour than men? Is it because we have some biological propensity to derogate and demean women?