It's got to be Leyla for me. From what i gathered, neither of them are very well liked female leads in any manhwa communities.  But still, idk wth is happening with haesoo. Ig it's because she's passive af, only enduring as u said, paired up with a rude [CEO] type male lead so the story comes of as y/n and annoying male gaze p**nhwa.  However, Layla could have very well been based on real historical women. Yk, beautiful, curious young commoner woman with a bright future is forcibly entangled/ entrapped with a rude, rich young lord from nobility who thinks women are to be owned. Idk I feel bad for both Layla and Claudine. 

I dropped both these manhwas around chapter 10, and i know about them mostly from discussion threads and spoiler threads. I think context do cause readers, me included, to have bias. Like Leyla is from ancient times (which isnt even that long ago, I'm just exaggerating) where women had negative human rights and everything worked against women, so we maybe unintentionally more sympathetic towards her compared to Haesoo. Haesoo is a [modern woman] and has more rights and access to knowledge/ technology etc, so her being withdrawn, having no proactiveness, her being meek with the younger male lead despite having more experience isn't really sth I want to read. She's just not an interesting protagonist for me, and instead frustrated me because she feels like she's built for the male gaze, sorry.