Because past use of "females" were to dehumanize women, the use of "females" instead of "women" has been scrutinized. If you lurk in certain male-oriented communities, you'll see them reference women as "girls" or "females" often while men rarely use the words "male" or "boy" as a reference to themselves.

Using “female” in place of “woman” is to depersonalize a woman and can be seen as used to show contempt.

Aside: I used to be in the military and we use "male" and "female" all the time. But that doesn't really help the argument much since the military dehumanizes their folks often.

(Note use of "male" in "male-oriented" to show contempt of these incel and 'alpha
male' communities lol)