It did go that way I remember it clearly.
I feel like the main impact of a policy like that would be to send the message that people were church members first, family members second.
It would also force fathers to actually involve themselves in watching over at least half the children in the room. No help for a woman with five daughters, but a slight respite for many. And it sends a message to the Dads.
Except that children under a certain age were probably on the women’s side with their mother, regardless of the gender of the children.
I don’t think you can draw that conclusion. If you have a misogynistic objective to make women “cover up”, but you want to make give it a veneer of equal treatment to people visiting who might have other sensibilities and cause a fuss, tell everyone to do it.
There are similar dress rules at the Buddhist temples in Bangkok, which we just visited last week.
Yes, the rules were that knees had to be covered. The robes provided would cover most women’s knees, but they did not even cover my shorts (i.e., my shorts were longer than the robe they made me wear over them).
Perhaps I should change this to a charge of discrimination against males by not providing robes of an adequate length for a typical male?
Sadly, I did not get to keep the robe after the tour finished.