I’m a big fan of Classic metal, and am especially interested in the role women played in the genre and the difficulties they faced succeeding in a very male-dominated industry where, ironically, male singers were doing their best to sing like women. So here’s a bunch of questions that I haven’t been able to find answers to:
Is it true that Ann Boleyn of Hellion fame ghost-played keyboards for the Runaways?
Why was Ann Boleyn ‘allowed’ to keep the band name “Hellion” in the 1985 split with the male members of the original lineup?
What inspired Jutta Weinhold of Zed Yago to leave a successful career as a professional singer to start a metal band?
What happened to Japanese Doom Metal band Velle Witch?
How did Rhiannon Tomos come to be a part of Welsh metal band Y Diawled and why did their partnership/the band end?
Videos of Y Diawled performances show what appears to be a very nonplussed group of Welsh people doing their best to support the band, how did the contemporaneous Welsh view what ultimately was a very important NWOBHM band?
who was the first woman-led metal band?
The members of Velle Witch seem to have disappeared off the map with vocalist Furuya Yukie spending some time in the short lived avant-garde/progressive metal band Jerk Empress.
The first woman-led metal band is a contentious claim and will largely be based on what you consider to be metal/when you think the genre began to define itself from the larger musical movement of heavy/blues rock bands of the late 60s and 1970s (for example, do you consider The Beatles' I Want You (She's So Heavy) to be an early example of heavy metal?).
That said, The Runaways (1975) and Girlschool (1978) both have a strong claim. Girlschool had more of the sound you'd associate with metal, but Joan Jett and Lita Ford had significantly more influence and visibility on music as a whole.
Not an answer to your question, but this thread by /u/RudoDevil celebrating women in metal for International Woman's Day may interest you.
There's also this nice article from Ride Into Glory with a good overview of women in the heavy metal genre.
Other sources:
Ian Christie, Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal
Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture