Because women have a high chance of being attacked and/or other bad things if they're direct about it. So the safe thing you have to do as a woman is move things to a distance and reject.
It also doesn't help that some overly aggressive peeps will dial the phone number they're given right then and there.
Anyway to get into dating you have to eat mountains of rejections, you'll never get anywhere if you take any one of them in particular deeply personal.
It's actually mind-boggling how many times we have to explain this in this very thread.