Penguins read men and women - but have genre specific tastes which likely favour male over female writers. I like Sci-Fi and Fantasy with a particular kick towards Pratchett and Gaiman, that said, the best writing I've ever read is by Anne Rice and feature (predominantly) male characters. I think it's dubious to assume that men can't write women and vice versa, I think both sexes do a bad job with the opposite sex and both sexes do a great job with the opposite sex - it really depends who you read.

My favourite books for a long while were the Northern Lights Trilogy, where the author (a middle aged man) perfectly captures a teen girl cresting the end of childhood and the loss of innocence - meanwhile, Bella Swan in the infamous Twilight series (written by a woman) may as well be replaced by a cardboard cut out of character-based-nitrogen.

Writing ability, like many other things is unrelated to gender and more akin to psychological and humanistic insight. The problem here isn't that men can't do it - its that publishing has for too long let some men get away with sub-par work and ignored the excellence of women to their detriment.