It’s not. In the western world this is a myth based on extremely outdated gender and family stereotypes. Some women prefer to have men pay, some prefer to pay themselves, some don’t really care. It’s not a hard rule you can use as an excuse to give up.

Generally, not absolutely at all times. The woman I eventually married settled into a plan of taking turns as to who pays for dates (she literally insisted to pay for the second date since I paid for the first, and it grew into a pattern from there). From the mid 90s to the first Trump admin (the period of time in which I was dating girls/women) she was one of only 3 who suggested or encouraged splitting the costs in some fashion.

This is just straight up incel cope. You cannot put all women in a box like that and then wonder why you are struggling to meet anyone.

Who put all women in a box? It's a tendency, a trend, not an absolute descriptor of all individuals. At the same time if you believe wealth/status indicators do not play a significant role in how attractive women perceive men to be, or at least no more so than the reverse you're going to be very disappointed in the ladies. There is research out there to that effect, specifically that wealth indicators correlate positively with attractiveness for both men and women, but that the effect is much stronger in women considering men than the other way around.