"Do You Hate Women?"

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

She then groped towards a coherent point when she said that Tolkien's writing in the 1930s was influenced by the society in which he grew up in and in which he lived, like the works of any writer. Certainly he was educated in, worked in, and socialised in mostly male-dominated environments, which may have influenced what he wrote; but it's not an indication of any 'hate' regarding women, a very strong term to use.

Tolkien was certainly, and unavoidably, a product of his time. However, I think you can point to Éowyn in LOTR alone as an indication that his ideas of the place of women in society were not necessarily totally in line with his contemporaries.

Granted, she might appear at first to be the lovesick, housekeeping maiden with little other purpose than to give Aragorn another problem to deal with.
Instead though, she herself rebels at her position and decides to ride off with the Rohirrim to an almost certain death, and ultimately accomplishes a tremendous deed in arms.

The fact that in The Hobbit we see no female characters at all could simply be explained by positing they it just didn't occur to Tolkien to add one, not through any conscious decision.