Wow
I have never seen you write such a long post in past 6-7 years
I'm currently at work but am happy to write up some of my thoughts on the matter as culture and history I find very interesting. These things tend to be very complex and are affected by a million and 1 variables, but here we go:
To preface as this can be a sensitive topic: Everyone is equal in the scope of rights and gov, however humans are not interchangeable. My boss is a woman and she is superior to me in so many ways, I aspire to be as good as her at what we do
Equality in the west was a slow start and one of the first instances was in France late 1600s/early 1700s when a soldier was elevated to noble status (I could be wrong on the timeline please forgive me).
The seed has now been planted
As democracy bloomed and equal rights started taking precedent, we as a society fought for equal rights across the board (women vs men, black vs white). A lot of these things are typically pushed by NGOs and organized social groups.
As these things were achieved you're left with NGOs having the option to say "jobs done let's shut the door" or keep their doors open and push for more. To do this you have to find "inequality" else where.
When you take the cultural norm of "we are all equal" this is actually intended to be as "we are all equal in rights and the eye of the state". As a lot of people are aware, we are not all equal in capabilities.
In highschool I realized I was too short to be a pro nba player. Does this make me unequal to them? In the aspect of basketball sure, in other things I might be better or worse.
As culturally, virtue has been a big moral indicator for the west. It is easy to tug on the virtue string: "you don't think women can play sports as good as men? Wow you bigot". I remember reading a thread here showing how women are only like 10 years behind men athletically.
Another thing to consider: your whole life you're told you are equal to the opposite gender. That you are just as capable (which you are) at achieving anything. Then later in life you see what you would consider contrary to that fact. It becomes difficult to understand.
But we are all equal, why is there a discrepancy. Certainly there is some foul play involved" when in reality it's just unequal in capabilities. Again though this just does not compute this is not what you were told your whole life.
Because this is contrary to their understanding of "everyone is equal" the reasoning behind it isn't "well men just tend to be more athletic than women and more interested in sports/physical competition" it becomes "sexism since clearly men don't want women in sports"
We humans have an insatiable need to have an explanation for the reality we view.