PBA: The Mishnah B’rurah clearly states a two-part reason. The second, which for sure doesn’t apply today, is that women don’t know how to count in Hebrew (although I’m not sure why they couldn’t count in the vernacular). The first reason is that there is a Vada’us that they will mess up, (at least partially) aided by this fact that they don’t know how to count in Hebrew. We see many, many women nowadays who make it through (with calendars, etc.) and many are even more Makpid than the men to remind them to count (if they Davened Ma’ariv early and such). If a woman wants to listen to that M”B, she has that R’shus, but the reasons pretty clearly don’t apply to most women.
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