What is it in response to?

Nothing, it's ESL trying to make a buck off of the current equity / discrimination grift and the absolute retardation of the woke playerbase.

Based on what evidence from who?

Dude trust the Science bro.

Is this temporary or permanent? Even if the problem it is meant to solve eventually gets solved?

Temporary in the sense of "whenever it stops being profitable to the company" I'd say. As for the ideologues, the fact that we exist is what they object to, so to them it's very much permanent.

Will this be an equal T1 league or a feeder league?

I have no idea where it's going to be put at structurally. 500k prize money is up there with the big leagues of the open circuit. The fact that it's women only means it's worthless as far as real talent scouting is concerned, because if they were good enough to legitimately play at the top they'd have no issue keeping up in ESEA, FPL etc.

Will there be restrictions limiting them from existing feeder leagues?

Not practically, since none of those players will be anywhere good enough to be in one of them to begin with (or else they'd be in those feeder leagues).