Yeah , both genders that still remained loyal to good wanted to fight but they just had very differing ideas on how to fight.

There's a lot of random accusations in the book that suggest if females had joined in the fight instead of insisting on waiting till they finished their super weapon, the dark one would have been perfectly sealed since the constant theme in the book is that the most powerful magic is created when males and female magicians work together in harmony

But then there are others who say both sides would have been tainted which would have probably destroyed the world as at least having a sane female magical force to stop the crazy male magicians running around was better than having both sides being crazy and very few people being able to stop them

This is all in book lore though, so its very decently rationalised