Promotion for this movie wasn't soley about "WOMAN DIRECTOR"

Indeed. Back then when Penny was on tv promoting the film, I recall that she would sometimes get a question about being a woman director, but we just saw her as an actress, who made the change into being a director, after starring in Laverne and Shirley, ha.

She was such a character anyway, a foo-foo question about "Women Directors" like that would have been dismissed by her with a roll of the eyes anyway, probably.

When asked how she came to direct after acting, in her usual Penny style of mumbling and that accent, and waving her hands around she told a self-deprecating story about being on set with her brother Garry when he was directing one of his usual hits and she was bored, so Garry said "OK then go get a camera crew and go shoot some second unit stuff..."

So she did. And that was her becoming a director in her words (which we know was completely modest as her brother would not have trusted her with second unit if he did not already know she had the skill.)

There used to be a time when someone's consummate skill at what they were doing was what made them admired. Not their gender first--and "oh by the way they directed a film and the most important thing about the film is that she's a woman who directed it and of course nobody in the history of the world as a woman ever got a chance to direct anything until now..." etc.

Virtue signaling wasn't really a thing when this movie was made. Sure it was about the Girls Baseball league during WWII which might have appealed more to women but plenty of people saw it.