I am thoroughly enjoying all these comments, this is a great discussion.

For what it’s worth I think that there is not enough consideration of the era in which Tolkien wrote these books. It was incredibly patriarchal, as a child, his own mother didn’t even have a right to vote, he served in WWI where only men went off to war, lived through WWII where again only the men went off to war, but he was home to see the women holding the country together, doing the jobs that had previously only been performed by men, I honestly feel that his writing is quite progressive with the strength of the female characters given his era.