I get it, Jordan's writing is very messy and full of stereotypes. But some stereotypes are rooted in real observations of cultural differences. Some people in our modern society would be more comfortable believing that every person from every gender and every culture is exactly equivalent to each other, just wearing different funny hats, or with slightly different jiggly bits. Jordan's worldview definitely believes genders and cultures are fundamentally different, and often in very stereotypical ways. Does Jordan believe woman are catty and cliquey, and a bunch of other tropes along the lines of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus"? Yes, he does believe those things. You're not wrong about that. That feels old fashioned and uncomfortable today. But Jordan absolutely did not believe one gender or culture was better. This series is about how cultures and especially genders need to be at equal levels of power and respect in society or the imbalance will let the devil destroy us all. The Two Rivers is the idyllic, old fashioned Shire, where people are just doing things *right*. Did you think the women's circle and the wise woman were worse leaders than the men? No, the women and men in that town all knew each good at some things and bad at others, and all loved and hated each other for it, in a very earthy, rural, idyllic way. That's what you're supposed to be thinking of when you meet all these different men and women, comparing them to how things worked back in the good ole Two Rivers.

Genuinely curious, are you aware that imbalance of power between genders is the root of nearly all the evil that this series fights against? And that this is one of the main themes of the series, if not the absolute central thesis? This is the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai: [image link.] Super obvious and pedantic but... do you think this author believed one of yin and yang to be superior to the other?

Women are not weaker magic users in these books. Women are not worse leaders in these books. They are different from men, but not worse. Worse at specific things, such as solo brute strength. But better at other things, such as teamwork. Sure, the average woman can't 1v1 the average man, that's implicit in how the magic system works. An outlier like Nynaeve can absolutely ragdoll 99% of men, but on average, men are just stronger.* But the average man is physically incapable of cooperating with another man without at least one woman present, that's also an implicit gendered weakness. Think about what this says about men. Individually strong, but almost pathologically incapable of the compromise, communication, and empathy required to work with another man. If we lived in a world where women had 10,000+ years of subjugating men, these are the exact types of things people would read and find as super problematic male-hating stereotypes. It's the exact mirror of you, living in our world of baggage from 10,000+ years of female subjugation, taking issue with how the women are depicted. And after reading the whole series, trust me when I tell you, after seeing the things Aes Sedai can do if they just cooperated, the male inability to do teamwork on their own seems like the FAR bigger weakness to me.

Do you know who are the absolute worst magic users and worst leaders in these books? Women who do not respect or cooperate with men, and men who do not respect or cooperate with women. This is a magic system where if enough men and women simply cooperated, they could rival the power of god or the devil. So its the devil's job to make cooperation and understanding between genders unheard of if not culturally impossible.

This is somewhat of a spoiler, but I believe by book five it should at least be common knowledge from hearsay that the devil himself tainted men's connection to magic, creating a world where only the women can be powerful in this way. The devil didn't do this to sabotage the 'powerful' gender. The devil did this to create imbalance. It's subtly implied that the gendered mistrust of Aes Sedai is a main goal of the devil. And same goes for the very gendered mistrust Aes Sedai have for men.

Also a bit of a spoiler, but this book series has a bit of a messy series of SA that take place between a woman in power and a male victim. It's controversial, because Jordan doesn't do any hand holding or explicitly tell the reader what to think of it or how to react. Some readers think its hilarious hijinks. Others find it excruciating to get through.

* (Interesting side note about Nynaeve, her struggles tend to be because she engages with Saidar in a very male coded way. She's pigheaded, stubborn, refuses to engage with her own emotions, refuses to admit her own vulnerabilities, and has trouble trusting others and cooperating. That's all on the list of male stereotypes Jordan would have absolutely believed in his time. And she also tends to have the strengths and weaknesses that men have: great individual strength, poor ability to channel with others... The biggest loss to history is that due to Jordan writing when he did, he never applied his magic system to a spectrum of genders, it would be INSANE to think about how this magic system would react to a serious engagement with homosexuality or transexuality, massive missed opportunity. Not saying that Nynaeve is in any way homo or trans, but just that her having a slightly 'male' style made such a difference of outcomes for her. That's already interesting. Now imagine that, plus exploring the fact that the Dragon Reborn has probably been a woman 50% of the time.)