I think that headline is very easy to misunderstand. Less interesting, but more accurate headline: Men have offspring with more different partners than women do. So there are more unique women in the family tree of humanity than men. Of course the number of men and women as direct ancestors is identical if we ignore repeats.

I've seen it as, 80% of women pass on their genes, but only 40% of men. (I assume that's no longer true today)

There is still a gender gap, but it's less extreme (on a percentage basis) now:

By age 40, 85% of women had had a birth, and 76% of men had fathered a child

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf