Making the first move is a skill. Many women are not practiced in that skill, for various reasons. Anyone's early attempts at a skill will likely be awkward and ineffective.

Thus, many women are bad at first messages and find the experience unpleasant.

On top of that, many men are shit. Just absolute trash to talk to.

So not only are many women floundering with this new skill of "send a good first message", when they get responses it's often men responding badly.

So it makes sense they'd give up. They're not going to fight against all the social norms.