Actually I think this is a matter of out of control politics more than anything. The big question people should be asking is "why are these toys out of stock?" the answer is of course "because people buy them". If you've paid attention for example you'll notice that female figures are among the first to sell out in many cases, for example there was a huge run on things like "Ninjini" for Skylanders and the limited edition one seemed to disappear in record time (I was reading some things about this, and another character called "Flashwing" that was some overpowered crystal dragon). When you look at things like oh say "Malifaux" or "Warhammer" figures the female models tend to be the hardest to find since the batches sell out. On something like Ebay you'll find it's far more expensive to say start buying an army of Sisters Of Battle or find other female figures than to say build a space marine force. When Games Workshop does restock some of these figures they seem to wind up depleting the supply fairly quickly. When it comes to statues and such collectors productions featuring female characters oftentimes out sell their male counterparts. I believe DC at one point even wound up running entire "DC Heroines" lines for this reason.
Now the reason for this is obvious, girls like the girl figures, and dudes like stuff with hot girls for decoration in setting up displays and such.
What's more action figures nowadays aren't something kids play with heavily, I mean it happens, but action figures tend to be aimed at a collector's market and fans. This includes people speculating and preparing for resale down the road. This has had some interesting effects on a few toy products right now like Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and Amiibo as you see products kids actually like in this video-game driven day and age entering into the collectors market, which means that a kid or the parent of a kid who simply wants a toy to be played with and is acting like a typical consumer (go to the store, expect a toy to be there) competing with fandom and collectors for the same pieces.
Something like Star Wars that has a *fanatic* fan base is probably seeing it's most recent IP circled by collectors and speculators like hungry sharks, especially with what a lot of old Star Wars toys go for The way this sounds is that as many female figures were produced as were of the male characters, however speculators and fans as opposed to kids bought them all up. The judgement is simply being made based on what can be easily found on the shelves at Wal*Mart. Chances are if you want a current run Princess Leia figure or one of the female "Rebels" characters it's pretty easy to get, but your simply going to have to go to a collector's market and pay three to five times the retail price to people who know they have the market cornered and will be able to sell these figures for what they want given time and patience.
I'd also expect the "multipacking" is because Hasbro knows geekboys will buy the female figures, and packing them with more figures (reprints and such) allows them to charge even more for the figure they know people want.
Now yeah, this does suck from the perspective of average mommy going to buy her kids figures, but this is nothing new, and it's been going on for a while and continues to "shock" for whatever reason. If anything the problem isn't to go after Hasbro but to complain to retailers. I'd be surprised if people on this site of all places haven't run into people camping stores like Wal*Mart and walking away with a bunch of copies of the same figure, or at least heard about it. When it comes to things like this stores don't generally enforce any kinds of limits. At the same time, it needs to be understood that Hasbro itself knows it's producing a collectible product at this point, and it's not going to shoot itself in the foot by overprinting. Like it or not the sales to kids right here and now aren't the bread and butter of their business, unless the whole situation changes, it knows that it's long term relationship is going to be with those collectors and speculators who will continue to purchase and trade the products for decades if treated well.
Trying to put things into the context of older toy lines like "Ninja Turtles" doesn't quite work because while huge that was a sort of "out of the blue" success and wasn't expected to be as long lasting as it turned out to be. Nobody expected nostalgia to actually have people wanting to pay crazy prices for Ninja Turtle figures down the road, thus nobody say ran out to all the toy stores and bought out entire shipments as soon as they came in the door to put them on Ebay or drive them around from Con to Con. In that case you can argue *some* sexism being present since it was arguably a testosterone fest, with that version being marketed at boys almost exclusively too young to think of girls as being anything but "yucky" (though this did not remain the case). However at the same time to the credit of the Turtles they did back down to the feminists making complaints and introduced "Venus Demilo" which hardly seemed to bring the screaming girls in and arguably remains mocked to this day. The point here being that going by this kind of precedent you really can't blame certain kinds of businesses for not catering to PCness when it usually backfires on the bottom line. Screaming gender inequality for example doesn't mean much if you can't guarantee women showing up with piles of money if the demands are met. You want pandering, you pay for it, even if half hearted, enough money comes in and as time goes on it will be taken more seriously.
Also as a side note, it's possible Carrie Fisher herself might have done a bit to tank Princess Leia in recent years. She didn't age well, and it still remains to be seen what a personal trainer (and if rumors are to be believed) extensive plastic surgery can do. Everyone dug her, or crushed on her, back in the metal bikini days, even girls sort of worshipped it as "Bikini Leia" is a sort of cosplay favorite, however time passes for everyone and I think the reality of what she aged into hit a lot of people it kind of hurt the character's popularity, fair or not. It also probably doesn't help that she apparently made some money (she wasn't as successful as other Star Wars Alumni apparently) as a stand up comic, and doing autobiographies talking about Star Wars behind the scenes which weren't especially flattering, I remember some quote about how to do that job, especially the famous bikini bit, she had to come to work really stoned. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of fans have a grudge against her for sort of mocking Star Wars professionally, sort of like a phase Shatner went through, albeit without working consistently like Shatner did, and not turning things around on her own (right now if she recants it's arguably because she's being offered money for a sequel that was never going to be made, Shatner seemed to apologize even when he didn't have any direct Trek projects in the works, he was arguably concerned that being typecast as Captain Kirk meant a lot of his other work wasn't being as appreciated as it should be.. Shatner actually being pretty talented and versatile).
