Is "girls" a suitable complementary term to go along with "guys"?

Trying to keep the discussion about language and meaning, and hopefully not getting socio-political, is "girls" a valid counterpart for "guys", as in "guys and girls"? The intention is to describe a mixed group of men and women in suitably casual terms.

"Guys" is unproblematic. However, "girls" could be taken to be diminutive. I personally don't, as I understand the intention to simply be equivelent to "guys", but I can see how some might take issue with it.

It seems that a generation or so ago it was common enough to say "guys and gals", but "gals" seems archaic now.

If not "girls", then what?

Also, it seems that "guys" can be used to mean both men and women, without having to specify the presence of women. However, I think the default assumption is still an all male group. In any case, I'm looking for an uncontroversial casual term for a group of women on the same level as "guys".

Solution 1:

Normally the term comparable to guys is gals.

And I think this is one case where Google NGrams can actually be useful. Here we see that guys and gals and gals and guys clearly outnumber girls and guys and guys and girls.

Note that girls by itself crushes gals in usage, but that only supports the contention, because girls is mainly used to describe female children.

In fact, if we NGram girls with boys (i.e., male children) we see that the usage is roughly comparable.

Solution 2:

"Guys and gals" isn't archaic, and I'd say it's your best bet here if you want to avoid simply saying "guys", in a casual context.

Much more formal is "ladies and gentlemen", though that would definitely not be used casually.

If you're not addressing the people but rather describing the group, they could be described as "men and women".

If you just want to refer to a group of (maybe) people of mixed gender, you could say "guys", "everyone", "people", "y'all", etc.

Solution 3:

Most men don't appreciate being called "boys", but few women take offence at being called "girls".

"Guys and dolls" might be a step too far in the wrong direction, though.