“The seculars claim that women are not only currently intellectual equals but that they have always been intellectual equals, and that nothing changed physically or intellectually to make them more equal in contemporary times but rather they claim that they were suppressed in the past.”
On what basis would someone state that currently, women are not intellectual equals? If there is no basis and you believe that thousands of years they were not equal then you can simply say nishtaneh hateva. The main argument that people use today in favor of women learning is that they have demonstrated intellectual equality, e.g. by becoming doctors, lawyers, scientists etc. (For the record I don’t know if “intellectual” is the precise word which should be used, but I can’t think of any one word which would be more precise.) Now if someone thinks that this is not true then let him/her hold that women are not capable of learning. But if someone thinks that it is true then why not say nishtaneh hateva to avoid any problems. Especially considering that it is very sensible that people’s intellectual/emotional capacity would change based on their life circumstances – i.e. someone who never had any education would have a much harder time learning gemara. So for instance, if all a woman ever had to do was cook and have children, then it would make sense that in certain regards she would be “intellectually inferior” (and presumably a man in that situation would also be inferior) but once women do the same things as men it would make sense that this would change.