I've been here since 2001.
I've seen a lot of threads about women in
Lord of the Rings on this forum.
Yet ever since doing serious research ino the fairy tale, I've discovered that you cannot always apply the rules of the tale to the rules of the real world. Therefore, all those guys talking about "women don't belong in stories of war" and "Tolkien was merely using his own experiences in WWI when it comes to women" need to shut up.
Fairy tale survives through its own logic and its own archetypes. Don't bring in the real world to justify the absence of females in the Fellowship, for example. This is reductive. It doesn't do justice to the fairy tale
and to the real world.
I suggest a good dose of Maria Tatar on the subject.
Four years of putting up with reductive discussions on the precense/absence of women in Tolkien's work have taken their toll on me.
Appendices:
Women in fellowship, etc.