We should, but neither the publishing industry, nor real life seem to work that way, and I don't see merit-based egalitarianism becoming the go-to decision-making process any time soon. Cf. "J.K." Rowling having to make up a fake middle initial because her publishers didn't think that a book about a boy wizard written by an admitted woman would be appealing to the presumed target audience.
Anyway, sometimes people just want to seek out a subset of authors that interests them for whatever reason and they're perfectly entitled to do that, if they like. I pay slightly more attention to works from my fellow Canadians (thanks to the little maple leaf spine stickers on the library bookshelf) although this does not give writers a free pass on their prose/poetry not sucking just because we happen to share nationality.
And frankly, since female and ethnic minority writers tend to be underrepresented in the sf/fantasy genre*, I see no reason not to specifically seek out their works if one wants to support them financially/via future word-of-mouth.
Anyway, to help place my recs in context, my favourite
Ursula K. Le Guin work is
Always Coming Home, which I feel sums up the rich world-building that she often engages in. I also tend to prefer her short/long stories, as found in
Orsinian Tales and the
Wind's Twelve Quarters and
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea ("The Kerastion" is especially lyrical/poignant/imaginative), to her novels. Oh, and
Catwings.
As for Moon, Cherryh, Norton, McIntyre, and Tepper: they've each produced fairly good works, some of which I've liked to a certain extent, but they tend to be insufficiently in tune with my personal tastes for me to truly recommend anything by them in general, unless there's a request for a particular theme element they've done that I think would suit.
I think I liked best
C.J. Cherryh's shared world anthology series
Merovingen Nights which the library used to have and I now own courtesy of the used bookstore, and
Andre Norton's time-travel ancient Egyptian bodyswap
The Wraiths of Time, available DRM-free from Baen, and
Sheri S. Tepper's
Beauty, which is a fairy-tale retelling with a conservationist twist.
Vonda N. McIntyre has a free e-book to try, by the way: the eponymous first in her
Starfarers Quartet.
I tried
Catherynne M. Valente's
Palimpsest when it showed up in last year's Hugo Voter Packet. Did nothing for me at all and I ended up voting "None of These" for Best Novel because while I did enjoy RJSawyer's
Wake and CPriest's
Boneshaker, I also didn't think they or the other included novels were Hugo winner-level quality fit to stand with those which had gone before.
If slightly fantasy-leaning alternate history with an ultimately science-y sort of explanation is okay, then
Mary Gentle has done excellent work for the books of hers that I've read, especially in her
Ash: A Secret History.
And if you want to go old school, you can always try James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon), or C.L (Catherine) Moore, or Joanna Russ, or Eleanor Arnason (whose said-to-be-semi-classic-I-haven't-read-this
A Woman of the Iron People is available DRM-free), all of whom seem to be reasonably well-reputed.
* A recent major-ish reprint anthology of "best of breed" works spanning several decades managed to completely omit any representatives from both and if anyone wishes to suggest that it was because works of sufficient quality by either female and/or non-white writers written over this time period were entirely lacking, I will point and laugh mercilessly.