I an an NRA pistol instructor. I teach about 100 people a year, and have done so for 20-ish years now.
During the "hand's on" portion, each student has to load and unload dummy ammo into both a revolver and also a semi-auto.
I use a 1911 for the semi-auto portion.
The particular semi-auto I use is a gold cup turned pin gun. The original spring on a gold cup is very light, but using it would destroy the gun with pin loads. I replaced it with a "standard" weight colt spring.
Anyway, off the top of my head about 1/10 guys seem to have a little trouble working the slide but they pretty much all are able to do it eventually. With women it is maybe 3/10 that have problems. A small percentage (1/20 maybe... I am guessing here) simply can not work it at all and I pull out a Browning Hi-Power so that they can use that to get thru the course.
Note that I show them tricks to make it easier before they even try the hands on (cock hammer first to get the hammer spring out of the picture, plant the grip base into use one's waist to give a little more to work the slide against.
I believe that the majority of the people who do have a problem, be it male or female, tend to be 50+ and a bit on the frail side.
So, where I am going with all this is that, in my experience with hundreds (couple thousand maybe) of basic pistol students, women statistically do have a harder time working the slide than men. Again, there are many women that have no problems at all, and some men that do have problems.
I am not sure if a solution would be a different PF (and hence a lighter spring) for women is 100% fair. There could be arguments both ways. What about the frail 50+ year old male office worker? Is it fair to give a 25 year old athletic woman an advantage and not him? I dunno.
To be honest, no one is born knowing how to use a gun. If it is hard the first couple times and one gives up, it will always be hard. If one practices a bit, the correct motions become memorized and it becomes easier. Shooting is a bit of an athletic sport and if one does it a bit, like any athletic sport, one will get a bit stronger.
If the goal is to get more people to shoot, both male and female, some sort of reduced PF might do that. Long term however it does not seem fair to allow reduced loads perpetually. When the new shooter isn't new any more the reduced PF will be an advantage. Also, there are plenty of women that have passed thru my class that had no problems with my 1911.
For what it's worth, it also isn't unusual for women to out-shoot their husbands when we go on the range.