Believing science is one thing, but that sounds like exactly the sort of "gendered narrative building" that feminists are trying to fight against. When they say stuff like "gender roles are fictional," a large part of it is due to people inventing stories in their heads about gender roles that aren't true. I think that it's fair to not try to add anything beyond what's demonstrably there.
Why? If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than men, it seems perfectly reasonable for them to suggest that that may have benefited an inventor in a fantastic discovery they made. People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives. Groups can claim whatever they want is fictional, it doesn't mean everyone else has to censor their speech accordingly.
I thought the person you were responding to was making a very thoughtful point, and one that was very respectful of women and the valuable insight some of them have that is often overlooked.
The problem is his comment can very easily be read as "Women should do what they are good at". This implies "taking care of kids and home" for many invested in this narrative. On contested topic like this, we should try to phrase our comments very clearly.
> People have no obligation to buy into others' narratives.
Our society seems to work best if we agree on fundamental "narratives". Equal opportunity being good is one of them. Actually, not really, since perfect equal opportunity would require us to not be able to help our own children more than others can help theirs. But let's not get into capitalism/class stuff but back to gender. A talking point the other side likes to make is "wanting equal outcomes". Nope, that would be stupid. But significantly unequal outcomes are a good indicator we'll find unequal opportunities when we look into it. Or some other reason. But the other side very quickly likes to accept "men and women are just different" as other reason and prefers to disregard e.g. fixing societal feedback loops via affirmative action. That finally brings me to your first part:
> If peoples' experiences and psychology (in my layman's understanding of agreeableness) show that women tend to be more empathetic than me
I don't think we have hard scientific research data showing to what degree this is based on nature or nurture. The latter would be problematic since against the spirit of equal opportunity. Of cause that question is hard to answer, since randomized controlled trials are impossible and understanding the physics and it's emergent properties is still beyond us.
To give a concrete example: Dame Caroline Haslett who was the President of the Women's Engineering Society in Britain created objectively the safest electrical outlet and plugging mechanism ever conceived (as long as you don't step on one). There was no such mandate for it to be so safe, you could argue that a man could have done exactly the same but I'd rather consider that she was being extremely empathetic as to how the device would be used and that safety in this area would quite literally save the lives of men, women and children.
A world without her contribution would be a lesser one, but I would argue that it was made with her femininity, not with how much she filled a man-shaped role.