> Since my schooldays I have been listening patiently to claims that Latin and the Romance languages are inherently sexist because if you have a group of men and women, the adjectives will be masculine.

This can be just as easily reversed. Imagine if instead we would use feminine gender for a mixed group and masculine gender only when the group is composed of men. Someone then might complain that this is sexist because men have special treatment - a group consisting of only men has a separate word to highlight the fact that no women are present.

Same with claims that the word "woman" in English is sexist because it is derived from a word "man". If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter - as if something was subtracted from the masculine version of the word, suggesting that women are lesser than men.

So in summary - my impression is that the complains have nothing to do with the material, but are just the product of current cultural zeitgeist.