> Female authors must be better

is not the same as

> there is evidence that women authors need to be better

The former is a conclusion. The latter is not. The latter should be further be qualified as "there is evidence that women authors [may] need to be better ... [, but further investigation into causality would be required to confirm this]".

Statements of fact and foregone conclusions without strong support merit the skepticism they are met with.

If someone said "Male authors must be better because they are published more often", I would expect that statement to be met with the same skepticism.