There is no reason to think that interpretation of metric that compared "men" and "women" must be aligned with that same metric when men/women is substituted wi

There is no reason to think that interpretation of metric that compared "men" and "women" must be aligned with that same metric when men/women is substituted with some other populations. When you make the substitution you completly change the nature of the comparison. Whether either comparison is "acceptable" depends on the metric and the populations. There is no ethical rule that says all comparisons for group X must be acceptable or all comparisons for group Y must be unacceptable.