Since we've been told on the live casts that our suggestions our read countless times...

That "some work" is likely more work than you think. While I would like to see the baron coat and boots ported over to females, it's not very likely to happen at this point. You can't just allow female characters to use the current models. They'd have to adjust the geometry and ensure that it didn't cause any issues with the unwrap (the texture coordinates), and then weight it to work with the female skeleton. It's not a terrible amount of work, but probably more than they want to devote to it.