The facilities afforded by male and female incarnations are not rigidly invariable. They change according to the cycles of existence as well as whether the incarnation is in the East or in the West. In some ages men are more active, energetic, and materialistic than women. In other ages, the reverse is true. In the past the women of the East were brave and intellectual. They considered no sacrifice too great for the happiness and well-being of their husbands, and their spiritual humility extended to looking upon the husband as God Himself. Now in the Eastern Hemisphere, the average man has a greater spiritual inclination than the average woman, just as in the West the average woman of today has a greater spiritual inclination than the average man. A man living in the East is different from a man living in the West, and a woman living in the East is different from a woman living in the West.
The joke is that in comparison with members of the opposite sex, the same soul shows varying degrees of superiority, inferiority, or equality with regard to spiritual or material matters-depending upon the cycle of existence, the sex of its body, and the earthly sphere in which it takes an incarnation.
-Discourses 7th Ed., p322