This enables you to customize your characters' skill sets, looks, race and gender. This undoubtedly gives the player some feeling of ownership for their characters and, of course, women players can select equal representation or dominantly female characters. This seems to be important to players regardless of their sex. Of course the team members are cooperating with each other against the enemy. They have to look out for each other.
Clerics heal wounds and cast magical protective shields for the whole party.
Warriors and sorcerers fight the battles at great risk to themselves to protect weaker characters. I know that women object to poorly designed combat. I have heard them criticize games that lack a variety of monsters and they are unhappy if the combat is too easily won. I remember admiring the designers of Ecstatica for forcing the player to cope with the variety of different monsters, most of which were very intelligent. 3D action games currently dominate the PC market and keep men at work after hours playing over the network.