[Kalimac]

Aerandir, Smeagol's grandmother never actually saw the Ring as far as we know; he told the story later on that she had given it to him as a present, but that was just a cover for the truth, which was that Deagol had found it and Smeagol had murdered him. Incidentally the grandmother is described as "a matriarch, a great person in her way" so there's another addition to the list of wise and benevolent Tolkien females.

Incidentally, Tolkien does not seem to have been much of a feminist - I doubt that the story would be much different if he wrote it today. Traditionally men have been the ones to go out and fight etc, and the women have been the ones to do the more domestic stuff; raise the kids, keep the home fires burning. I don't think it had much to do with WWII, though, this sort of thing had been going on for millennia. Hitler indeed tried to give it a rush with his credo of "Kinder, Kirche, Kueche" but I doubt that that or WWII had any particular effect on Tolkien's writings as they relate to women. The point he may have been trying to make with Eowyn was that she was an exception, the same way historically there have always been exceptions to the warrior/wife pattern - Boadicea, Joan of Arc, the women in 18th century wars who disguised themselves as men to become soldiers. Their situations were anomalous, and it was a mark of their special bravery that they were able to do what they felt they were called to despite the strictures of their society. Eowyn's situation is so untenable simply because there is no real place for her in the society she lives in, and her part of the story is about how she creates that place for herself. If Tolkien were writing LOTR now and decided to create a whole squadron of warrior-women of Rohan, Eowyn's conflicts - and thus her story - would vanish; and LOTR would be the poorer for it.

OK, sorry about the diversion. As for whether women could have been tempted by the Ring equally - I'd have to say that being mortal and fallible as men, that they would be equally tempted, though as has been pointed out, there's so little contact between women and the Ring in Tolkien that this is pure conjecture. And for some reason, I can't shake this picture of Rosie Cotton, for example, just laughing at "Rosie the Strong" visions and maybe even throwing the thing away...but of course, that would have made things much worse in the end.