There's an oft ignored corner of D&D history, where women were welcomed, even courted to play Dungeons & Dragons. I am referring, of course, to the D&D line (in contrast to the AD&D line) in the early 1980s.
It started with Tom Moldvay's Basic rules (though he was building on the initial inclusiveness of Holmes' rules). Moldvay conspicuously and conscientiously uses "he or she" throughout the rulebook, when referring to both players and DMs. The section on character generation shows an illustration of both a male and a female player each considering what kind of character they would make. The example character is the famous Morgan Ironwolf, a female fighter not bound by any sex-based ability score limits, as the D&D line had none. The party in the examples of play also include Sister Rebecca.
(Much of this derives from Moldvay's actual mixed play group. This group was actually detailed a year before the Basic Rules were published, when they were used to fill out a
sample of the AD&D Dungeon Master Adventure Log, edited by group member Lawrence Schick. Morgan was played by Moldvay, Sister Rebecca was played by his sister Rebecca (natch). The group included Jolan Moldvay, who I believe was another sister, Dave "Zeb" Cook's wife, Helen, and Jean Wells.)
Both the Basic Rules and Cook/Marsh's Expert rules were filled with non-cheesecake illustrations of female characters of every class. Now, it's not perfect. The illustration of Morgan is pretty ridiculous, and both the female magic-user on the cover and in the illustration mentioned above sport high-slit dresses that show off some skin. But the book as a whole was inclusive enough that I could give it to my 12 year old sister, and she was immediately onboard and eager to play.
This continued with the 1983 Mentzer revision. Though he abandoned the explicit "he or she" style in favor of a slightly more stilted one that avoided third-person pronouns, the interior artwork by Jeff Easley and Larry Elmore was an improvement even on B/X with its inclusion of tasteful and inspiring artwork of female characters. Again, not perfect. On the plus side, it introduces the cleric Alanna as a mentor to the (illustrated male) tutorial character. On the minus side, it fridges her not long after her introduction. But this was all pretty progressive for the early 80s.
Now, given the totality of TSR's history, from the 1970s through the late 80s and early 90s, why were these products comparatively non-sexist? Because this was peak "D&D as mass market product" era. TSR was happy to be progressive if they thought there was money in it.
1985 saw a withdrawal from this as sales plummeted in the post-fad era. This was when Clyde Caldwell, with his Neo-Frazetta style, was hired, and put in charge of the Gazeteer covers. 2nd Edition, while being much less cheesecake in the core books, elected to use "he" throughout the PHB and DMG. It seems to me that with falling sales, the company endeavored to market more towards what they perceived as their core market: young, male hobbyists. And ironically, this was all under the auspice of Lorraine Williams, with Gygax ousted in late 1985.
My sister and I got into D&D in 1987, first with B/X, and then BECM, so our exposure to TSR cheesecake was somewhat delayed. From our experience with BECM, we were fans of Elmore, and regarded Caldwell with some exasperated amusement. In all his art for Dragonlance, Elmore drew Goldmoon as wearing long buckskin pants. When Caldwell drew her for DL 1 - Dragons of Despair, he naturally removed her pants. We understood then that Caldwell's desire to draw female skin knew no logic nor shame.
en.wikipedia.org
