I have two road bikes & a TT bike right now & none of them are WSD.
However, my first road bike was a WSD and there's something to be said for it, I don't think it's BS at all- not as much as pertains to geometry but as pertains to components. If you buy a WSD it's likely it will come with a women's saddle, narrower bars and sometimes shorter cranks. When I buy a unisex or men's bike, I have to swap all those things out right away. So the WSD bikes can be a more affordable package for women. I think it's also totally fine for a woman to have choices of colors that might appeal to her more than black & red. (That said, I don't like most of the girly-colored bikes & personally exclude lots of WSD bikes on color basis alone.)
As to which bikes are good, I think Trek, Specialized, and LIV/Giant all make good women's bikes.
I would encourage her to look at women's bikes and men's/unisex bikes all at the same time and pick whichever she prefers.
I love all of my bikes BTW: BMC GF01 which is the endurance/climbing bike, Trek Madone which is the go-fast bike, and Fuji Norcom Straight which is the go-even-faster bike.
