There are plenty of papers on feminine play, told from all different perspectives.

But you can most definitely design for a specific demographic. It's just that there's no limit to who can and will enjoy the game you make. A game 'made for women' can literally be played by anyone.

Designing for a target demographic is fine. Almost every male streamer I watch played this game, and I enjoyed it as a man myself, even if they had women in mind during development. Nothing in the game alienates male gamers.

Designing with a woman in mind just means focusing on a subject matter that polls well with women.

I don't think games should be designed to be exclusionary towards a particular gender, but not every story or setting is going to universally appeal to everyone. I don't have any particular studies handy, but I feel like it's pretty intuitive to assume a game about designing a type of clothing that is traditionally associated with women is, in general, going to appeal more to women than men.

There will be exceptions to that, of course - I'm sure there are some men out there that play and enjoy Dressmaker, but designing a game about dressmaking with the intent of appealing to women isn't necessarily exclusionary, it's just knowing your audience. I'm not even sure how you'd design such a game in a way that is equally appealing to both women and men, honestly.

You say that as if gender biases don't exist or that stories and gameplay should not cater to them. The most played games by women and men are very different and there's other games that both play equally. FPS is mostly men and life sim/puzzle is women. Knowing this difference, designers should absolutely build for their user base's preferences.