[Quoth]

It's humans or mankind, though why isn't it Human, like Orc, Elf, Dwarf or Hobbit?

It's worse for French women because in English most nouns have no gender, but all French ones do. So poor maligned Morgan is Le Fay (male, and originally no relative to Arthur). See French for principal or company director.

We use to have actress and aviatrix. Someone decided they should be male: actor, aviator. What next? Abolish princess, seamstress, queen etc? Are Waitresses and Monitoresses gone?

Unfortunately historically even English, not just Italian, German, French, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese is gendered for many titles and often he or man or men or mankind rather than it or they stood for men and women, boys and girls. You see some modern documents simply replace he with she, rather than maybe (s)he.

There are no easy answers, except if you are a man, don't be misogynistic or patriarchal or mansplaining.

Also in England I think it's insulting to call a woman a girl, but in rural Ireland a granny of 90 can be called a girl. Or even a fine girl ye are.