There was a concept of treating women with respect.

That's a non-sequitur. There are plenty of other words that start with 'fu-'. It's also a loanword from Chinese.

And even if not, I haven't heard anyone describe the coinage 'fupa' as offensive.

To the downvoters: I said I don't find merit in the suggestion that using 'fu' (or 'foo' as a function name) would be considered to constitute profanity. I simply learned 'foo, 'bar' and 'baz' as silly-sounding function names. I didn't make any connection from 'foo' in the CS context to 'fubar' in US military slang till decade later.

(Neglecting that there weren't many women in CS in the 1960s. I don't even see that the word-fragment would have been considered offensive in civilian context, esp. to non-US speakers of English)

In the 60s, women were generally infantilized, but I suspect the “it was done for the women” explanation for the drift of “fu” to the already-existing term “foo” once separate from the other part of “fubar” is a just-so story, rather than a historical fact.