The reasons for the sensitivity and the emotion are complex social and gender issues, but I think it boils down to women resisting their long history of being judged by how they look. Sadly, many women are drawn to these behaviors in business. However, it is also harmful to ride the pendulum swing to the other extreme where you are deluded into thinking that appearance does not matter. The blunt truth is that, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, how you dress at work affects how you are perceived. How you are perceived at work affects how you succeed.
Many people use clothing to make all sorts of life statements.
If you do this in the business world you place a self-imposed obstacle in your own way. Women sometimes take an opposite stance, and proclaim that how they dress should not matter. They insist that the quality and quantity of their work is how they should be judged. They state that they do not have the time or money or inclination to pursue and maintain someone else's stereotype of how a successful woman should dress at work. They are liberated feminists, free of the bondage and oppression of the past.