Don't do me like that

[alatar]

Three questions that begged to be asked are: Do women in ME need to hold a sword to be considered worthy of the modern female reader? Is this what Lush and others are asking for, or do they want female characters in LotR to simply get more 'word time' in the books? If we had the Amazon army helping to break the seige of Gondor, would this satisfy if the female captains were given the same 'mention' as Halbarad? Or is the desire to have a female character that walks as far in our heads as do Sam and Frodo, and yet almost never wield a weapon, except at dire need?

And do we have data that would indicate that a mixed gender FotR would be as effective? Would there be a certain number of females in FotR that would be more or less effective? And when considering the question, we should constrain the characters to the same steps (from Bag End to Mount Doom etc and back) as taken by the currently all male Fellowship.

As a male, the question of gender never occcured when I read the LotR as I was just so enthralled by the story, writing, characters, etc that I didn't think about nor care what the gender roles were. Do new readers, either male and female, now start off with that perspective?