Women are in leadership positions throughout the field, as editors, publishers, agents, and writers. About the only position where women are still dramatically underrepresented is that of the professional artist. Twenty years ago, writers like Russ, Le Guin, Delany, McIntyre, Wilhelm, and Tiptree presented variants on the traditional gender roles, variants still being experimented with now. Now, Yolen, Varley, Mixon, Scott, Lackey and other writers are continuing to push the envelope. I suspect Beth Meacham is being treated better in the publishing field now, than Marilyn Hacker was thirty years ago.
Society is a trickier nut to crack.
These attitudes persist. Even now, I find myself reminding folks that my husband is not useless in the kitchen or as a parent because he's a man, that my daughter is not unfit to be a scientist because she is a girl, and that, yes, I really have managed most of the family finances for the last seventeen years. As a technical writer, I always includes women in my examples and procedures, perhaps to the point of over representation. When I wrote fiction, I wrote about varied individuals of all sexes, cultures, and strengths, but I particularly wanted to write about women. And as a reader, I want to read about characters and ideas that will continue to broaden my ideas of the possible.