Its a sandbox game that allows you the freedom to assault anyone (though from what I know kids are off the table, thankfully.) If you can kill any man in the game, why should women be any different?

I remember in the first RDR, you could tie up a woman and leave her on the train tracks until a train came by. I didn't see anywhere near the backlash 7 years ago when that was going on.

Have we become that much more PC or is the fact that its suffragettes on the end of the violence the issue today?

I think that as long as you're able to attack any NPC (excluding kids), its silly to exclude women. You could argue that it encourages violence against women, but if you go down that route do we have to start excluding women from fighting games because Ryu shouldn't be hitting Chun-Li?