Literally the first scene in ROTR is Lara Croft standing proud ready to climb over a literal mountain while her team is out of breath, exhausted, and about to give up. It seems your issue is with the team trying to portray her in a more grounded tone than someone like Nathan Drake who's literally superhuman and confusing the intentions of the design team. They don't animate Lara reacting to her environment, (like rubbing her arms in snowy environments), specifically because she's a woman, but because that's more believable, in the same way that she reaches her arm out when she goes near walls. As games get more realistic these are some of the nuances that are to be expected when it comes to character animation otherwise the character doesn't feel like they're in the world. Take for example the AC series, Ezio, did everything near perfectly, even as an old man, when they made Connor and added weather, they added things like him reacting to weather by rubbing his hands together, and in Unity starting adding things like stumbling after a long jump. Throughout Rise Lara also recovers and saves herself much faster in the vast majority of scenarios compared to in the first game. She's definitely not meek. Especially in terms of body language and how she interacts with others.
It could be argued that they should've had more budget to change up her core animation set to be reflect the confidence she gained after the events of the first game. Since ROTR reuses quite a bit from TR in terms of animation.
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