My loose understanding, ironically, is that they are as a whole. (Obviously individual people regardless of sex differ in their potentials and development as individuals, but from a broad perspective, I believe the former is true).
I believe this is, in part, why various chivalry-like concepts have existed in cultures, since from a purely biological POV, the female is viewed as "higher" and more expendable than the male, and is more individually vital to the survival of a group or tribe.
My understanding is that the female mind on average tends to have a better awareness of more-evolved aesthetic faculties, while the male, on average, tends to have a lower level of development, and tends to fall back on less-evolved rational faculties (which are more developed in chimpanzees and other apes than the former aesthetic ones, if they exist at all).
Examples which I see of this in popular culture are how communications problems often occur between men and women; it seems that often men tend to become confused in interactions by the literal "words" of the conversation, due to over-reliance on the rational thought process, while women tend to have a keener sense of awareness with the present moment and better able to read between the lines.
I'm not sure what ramifications this has on daily life, but most of the information I've seen leads me to this conclusion.
For example, while there are some leftist myths that culture existed primarily for the 'oppression' of women for most of history, it seems actually that culture from an evolutionary POV viewed women as more 'valuable', and therefore laws which denied them legal freedoms were more of an "over-protection" or treating women like children than an "oppression" per se (e.x. a culture may have viewed women as too valuable to expend as soldiers, while men comparatively were more expendable).
This is why I view egalitarianism as a falsehood regardless of which "side" is demanding the equality, whether modern feminism, or so-called "men's rights" groups who protest things such as discrepancy in punishment for rape between men and women.
The reason the punishments in rape differ, for example, is because men are naturally more violent and more inclined to violent rape than women are, and the end result of men raping women is more physically harmful (e.x. it can result in the rape victim getting pregnant) - therefore culture is perfectly justified in viewing male rapists as worse than female ones (which are almost always statutory rather than forced).