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Fair enough, and this much I can work with in class, but let me pose a tough question: what's wrong with having a book that is about boys? Or, more precisely, what's so off-putting about looking at TH as a book about boys? Boys and girls are different in our world (without getting into the reasons for this, or why it perhaps should not be this way...) and so does not each group deserve his or her own stories? And is it not too much to ask that each group pay attention to the stories of the other?
Now, I'm not suggesting that TH, has or must be read as a boy's tale, only that given that it is a boy's tale, must we work to deny that or find ways "past" it for women to find a way in?
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Well, the trouble is not with the book. The trouble is that your students are missing the point. In my first post I perhaps dwelled too long on the reasons why thse books might be off-putting at first to the young women in your class. However, as others have so rightly added, it is not the book's job to be all things to all people.
I think you need to present TH book as a book about boys. About men. Present that as a positive thing! After all, half of the children your students will be teaching (I assume these are elementary-ed majors) will be boys, and the other half will have to understand boys on at least a superficial level.
In the end it's your students' responsibility to be open-minded enough to be able to appreciate works of literature that might not be immediately appealing to them. Barring that, it's absolutely their responsibility to articulate some better criticisms than "its' a bad book" or "it's a boy's story." (Because, as you've so rightly pointed out, the fact that it's a story about boys isn't really a problem at all, as long as boys' stories aren't the only kind you read, which it sounds like they're not.) Maybe they didn't like TI; maybe they won't like (or didn't like in the past) TH; but they need to be able to give you something more than the vague statements they seem to have been coming out with. My cynicism is back--it's still sounding to me like they aren't doing the reading, or aren't doing it closely enough, and are grasping for something to say in class.