Never forget: causation does not necessarily imply correlation
Let X = "angle"
Let Y = sin(X)
Then X has a causal relationship with Y, but Corr(X, Y) = 0.
I doubt that's what you're saying, though!
A pretty reasonable explanation is that men and women have different interests. Egalitarian countries generally provide an environment where people are free to express these differences in preferences. A mechanism that would make it causal.