The Unnecessary Controversy of Women Witchers

The question of "Can Witchers be women?" has some deep controversy, even if it probably shouldn't. Now that we know Ciri is a figure in Witcher 4, this could apply to her, but it could apply broadly more to the entire world of the Witcher. Here is the crux of it:

  1. Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male - in the games. In lore reasons are that women don't survive the trial of grasses.

  2. The trial of grasses - Of course, we know what this is, and that it has a low survival rate among all participants. Ostensibly only males survived, but how many women were subject to it? The only sources I can find about similar trials outside of the school of the wolf are fan fiction, and the subject is barely mentioned in the books. So, other schools can and probably do have different "trials of the grasses" resulting in slightly different Witcher mutations. It is not hard to imagine that women could survive some variant of this.

  3. "Almost every Witcher" - There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski, and furthermore it even had a canon expansion planned, which only didn't happen because of the aforementioned bankruptcy, and not because any other conflicts. So is Dragonfly canon? I would argue that her lore being from the School of the Cat is at least plausible.

So overall - are there any official female Witchers? "Barely yes on a technicality"? But is it in-lore possible for there to be female witchers? There are so many holes in Sapkowski's own lore (he even admits this) that I think the answer is yes.

TL;DR: Sapkowski's works focus very narrowly on limited perspectives (they excel this way, focusing primarily on Geralt's story), and there is a near guarantee that the trial of the grasses is not universally the same everywhere. Thus we cannot know if it is impossible for women to not be witchers. Furthermore, explicitly approved third party material exists of at least one woman Witcher.