Quick and dirty assessment: if poor men and poor women had approximately equal status, then we'd expect the following:
This is pretty demonstrably not the case. (Quick google: compare the marketing resources devoted to http://www.kiva.org/women vs. http://www.kiva.org/men)
That could also be explained by people preferring helping women to helping men because they expect men likely to feel insulted/humiliated when offered charity. Or because they are more likely to perceive distant/foreign/poor men as potential threats.
This is interesting, I wonder if there's anything to it: International variation in IQ – the role of parasites (paper) by Christopher Hassall of U. Carleton.
It strikes me as the sort of thing that could be as big an issue as lead in the environment. Raise the sanity waterline: improve health!