Moroseland It's what the reader base/market decides and they go with what's considered to be better for readers and writers. There will be very few novels that would not follow the predetermined concepts of genres that have already been established, so they don't bother with expanding it from their side.
And yes, no one will be hurt if they do add it, but as I said before, they go with why bother doing something that won't have much affect on them anyways.
Honestly, I don't think a lack of respect is a huge issue for WN. It's not like social niceties are expected in the comments section. A lack of equality? What do you even mean by that? Obviously, there's a lot of sexist, nationalist, and homophobic content in various novels, but that doesn't exactly lend itself to inequality. That's just bigotry, and the only real solution would be to start taking these novels down, which I don't think is what anyone wants. You've mentioned less genres for novels with a Female Lead, but frankly, improving things for readers isn't really related to equality, and it's something WN should be (but isn't) doing anyway.
I do agree that they should expand the genres for Female Lead, or at the very least change the fact that all the Female Lead genres are basically just romance. It seems, I'm not going to say the word, but as an author that writes stories with Female Leads, the Female Lead genre is a pain to select.
If you've ever joined any of the open discussions on the WebNovel discord, the CEs themselves disclose that when picking a genre, that the 'Female Lead' and 'Male Lead' are just guidelines and nothing more. If your book has a female lead, but no romance takes place in the story it'll be better displayed in a genre that's under Male Lead. Same for any male lead books that have romance or BL, it's best to place them under the 'Romance' genre under Female Lead.
For instance, my book has a female lead with no romance whatsoever in a Fantasy-like world, so I was advised by my CE to switch over to the Fantasy genre under ML for better commerciality.
It's just a China novel site thing that they aren't willing to change because of customs and their culture's norms.
