I don't mind wearing a tie.
I normally wear a three piece suit and tie to work. I don't have to and can probably get away with chinos and a dress shirt but i like wearing a suit and the extra layers come in handy given that the room temperature varies massively depending on where in the building i am. I've seen plenty of people who look smart in more casual office wear and people who have looked scruffy in a suit. An ill fitting, creased suit with a baggy shirt looks much worse than chinos and crisp polo shirt.
As for women wearing ties, it simply has never been a major fashion look for women. Modern smart tops for women in the workplace don't really button at the neck and suits for women only really started to become somewhat fashionable in the 80s when we started to see those awful shoulder padded suits in pop music culture. They started to enter the business world a bit more after this but generally, a lot of women opt for a smart skirt and top or a dress over a suit and rarely do they wear a top that suits a tie. Probably because of this, the tie has always been associated as male(?).
I guess if us blokes had the freedom to dress more casually in offices, we would soon see the suit and tie as less fashionable office attire. There certainly seems to be far less people wearing them compared to before. I can only recall seeing my parent's male colleges wearing a suit and tie, so i imagine that it was business policy to wear a suit.