Gender nouns

Is there a point in nouns having a gender? I was always told it removes confusion, ironically the opposite is true for me anyway.

Maybe it is a coincidence but voting rights for women where first passed in Finland (non-indoeuropean linguistically) in 1906 and then in 1918 in USSR and Poland and in other slavic countries shortly after that, while in USA it was 1920 and in Western Europe much later with Switzerland in 1971 and Lichtenstein in 1984 (!!!!!!). And those countries where pretending they where first class democracies. It is as if Germanic and Roman speaking countries men though about of universal men rights and not women rights, as a separate thing.