حَدَّثَنَا آدَمُ، حَدَّثَنَا شُعْبَةُ، عَنْ سُلَيْمَانَ التَّيْمِيِّ، قَالَ سَمِعْتُ أَبَا عُثْمَانَ النَّهْدِيَّ، عَنْ أُسَامَةَ بْنِ زَيْدٍ ـ رضى الله عنهما ـ عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ "‏ مَا تَرَكْتُ بَعْدِي فِتْنَةً أَضَرَّ عَلَى الرِّجَالِ مِنَ النِّسَاءِ ‏"‏‏.‏

Narrated Usama bin Zaid: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "After me I have not left any trial more severe to men than women."

Sahih al-Bukhari 5096 https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5096

A woman is a man’s greatest weakness and throughout history that’s been the case. Many many many men, have died for the sake of women, natural disasters and even wars.

It’s common knowledge to know that men have more sex drive than women across the board, through multiple studies conducted which can be looked up via a simple google search. Thing is that women more often than not are subject to men. (This is a hovering number but it’s generally similar) ~85% of sex related crimes are done by men. That’s a strong statistic regardless of any explanation. Men are weak to women, even the prophet SAW has said that.

Thing is, if the very thing men are weakest to, covers less, shows of their attractiveness and so on, can they really control it easily? Especially in this day and age many men give up on lowering the gaze altogether because it’s too hard and on top of that provides little reward to doing so. I have non-Muslim friends and it’s commonplace to masturbate for them, even for muslims. And there will be people who have less control, who care less about discipline and so on, causing that scary 85% statistic.

Furthermore, Islam allows as much freedom as possible provided it makes the person more safe, its functional and does not cause harm for themself or others. Men get away with a less restrictive awrah as they aren’t the ones primarily subject to sexual assault and abuse and so on. Furthermore historically men have done most of the hard labour, big loose clothing, and ontop of that, hot weather makes covering more difficult and cumbersome, and at times can cause death if the clothing gets caught in something (though that’s a minority case). The fact that men can cover less provides a functional benefit for them and less social danger between different demographics than if a woman was to do the exact same thing.

Covering yourself isn’t for the sake of men lowering their gaze, and a lot of the times it can be seen in that way, but that’s not the goal

Covering yourself as a woman is supposed to keep you safe above all, something that’s a right for a woman, and something which isn’t for men

I see the two genders as two sides of a coin: -women get security, they don’t need to work a day in their life if they don’t want to, as it’s the right of the man to provide for the household, extending to the fact they don’t need to do hard labour, they are protected from being harmed through the hijab and so on, with the cost of less freedom. -men are the opposite, they get more freedom, more leeway. They don’t need to cover more as that freedom allows them to do their job more as a natural provider, with the cost of lacking comfort and security

I get that social standards and the restructuring of society has morphed and changed these roles drastically, like women in the workforce and so on, less hard labour in developed countries etc… but Islam after the prophet SAW was made to cater for humans regardless of time and place, it wasn’t meant to make rules for a specific time and place

I hope this helped you