Did you know that Chinese didn’t have a word for “She” until about 100 years ago? In fact, Chinese operated without a female 3rd person pronoun for thousands of years, and it wasn’t a problem – until interaction with the west. Watch this video to learn the fascinating (albeit winding) history of Chinese gendered pronouns.
We’re discussing gendered pronouns, not grammatical gender. Mandarin didn’t have gendered pronouns until the 20th century.
And adding gendered pronouns was a more or less conscious choice.