At its rawest I regard The Plague as a documentary style of reportage, with pockets of proselytizing thrown in ......
For the first 30 or so pages I felt a sense of urgency and drama, wanting the townspeople to react with far more caution and care than they were showing. So, that is a sign of how the early writing (or reportage) got me in.
But then I started to feel bogged down with the humdrum of their daily lives and the administrative and societal changes that were forced upon them.
The philosophical dialogue was credible and consistent with the pen picture of each of the characters; but I thought that it was also somewhat contrived.
I thought that the universal theme of 'Plague' and its various impacts, whether they be isolation or separation or general inhibitions of liberty etc, could be applied to any situation where such constraints were unwillingly imposed on those to whom they applied.
And, yes, I too noticed that women, in general, were not much considered and were only added for completeness of story telling rather than because of their significant role in such a crisis.
Edit
I'm pleased I read The Plague, although it wasn't quite the style of writing I thought it would be.