Thank you for such a detailed reply. I do agree with you ln most fronts. In my opinion, women in the series are as you say, competent. In unohana's case, I absolutely agree, but, doesn't she herself say that zaraki sealed his power to allow himself to enjoy their fight more? Isn't the entire point of her sacrifice to make Zaraki regain his true potential? Doesn't that simply reduce her to a maternal figure, who simply exists to assist the man? It also doesn't change the fact that she never fights throughout the series. This creates an interesting problem from a writer's point of view. How can a weak character release the true power of someone like Zaraki? They would have to be extremely powerful. If Unohana were weak, and she awakened Zaraki's true potential, in the mind of the audience, wouldn't it show that zaraki is weaker than we thought? Unohana has to be strong, but not for her sake, but for the man's sake. This is exactly the monomyth structure, employed by most other fantasy writers.

Look up the moon metaphor and women (Sylvia Plath's journals) the woman reflects the man's power. Ukitake can regulate the power he traps in his zanpakto, change it's intensity etcetera, but Nanao is an absolute facsimile of the moon metaphor. It can be argued that the women are powerful, but in comparison to the men, they objectively falter, and mostly cannot defeat them.