Personally I like to mix things a bit... To have options in game-mechanic sense. Like for instance I like that half-elves and half-orcs are different from humans, even though some half-elves and half-orcs could be different, taking more dominant traits from either parents. And why does all the dwarves have to have penalty to charisma, couldn't some just be lovable?
If men and women would be different in D&D, we could effectively double the amount races without making things overly complicated. That sounds nice and I won't even bother to look it any deeper than that. For me the whole idea sounds great! More "races" for me thank you!
Also not to degrade women, I could make the adjustment as something that would favour women, such as giving them -2 STR and +2 Wis. Now all the best fighters would be male and all the best clerics would be female. In this case women would "win".
However I think this wouldn't work because many people would get upset with me. And since it's a cooperative game, I'd rather not have my fellow players and DMs upset with me. Only if I would have excessive number of players, most of them male... maybe then I could pull something like this.
Also, you know what's funny?
I like Game of Thrones. It's fantasy and the whole thing is very male dominated (but it's not the reason why I like it). If they would make a game that would be LOYAL to the series (or the book Song of Ice and Fire), there would have to be something in the game-mechanics to restrict women from certain roles. It could be something about the campaign world and/or character generation... I really don't care how it would be done, but if in Game of Thrones RPG half or even a quarter of the combat-cabable heroes would be females, it would be a travesty.
Yet no one complains about the series, everybody seems to love it. Both men and women.
Do you also think that we should modify the stats for all female characters regardless of race? When ever this topic comes up it is all about humans.
Do we just assume that elves are equal in everything because they are elves not humans?
There is a game book out for GRRM Game of Thrones world.