The examples you give do not support given hypothesis at all. Scandinavian countries have not had more gender equality at the time of lower quality of life. I'm also not sure about them having ever had “dramatic“ improvements in quality of life. But even if they had more gender equality, and even if they had dramatic improvements in q. of l. the assertion you made still does not follow in any way based simply on that observation. There are so many other factors that could be involved. For example, notice how all the countries you mentioned as more egalitarian in this area were either socialist, or influenced by socialism (India). Eastern European countries, for example, before the revolutions were extremely patriarchal and conservative in regards to gender roles (and other aspects of life). You can see this returning after the Eastern Block collapsed. You can say what you want about economic aspects, but socialism brought gigantic improvements in a lot of social and cultural aspects of life in those societies (gender equality, literacy, etc.).