This bit surprised me:
Quote:
The absolute worst offender was Final Empire, which was like an unpleasant caricature of Dragonflight. The world was supposed to be gritty - but to an unrealistic and ultimately unbelievable extent. Normal people had no rights, women were killed by the nobles if they slept with them (to prevent half-breeds), ash literally rained from the sky and the nobility had super powers with the ultimate bad guy seemingly immortal.
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Now, the main character of that book is a woman. And she singlehandedly saves the world. And if you progress on from the point in time where the entire world was falling apart, and civilization had been flash-frozen by the Lord Ruler, you will find a far more cheerful place for women --and men for that matter -- to live in.
Quite frankly, peasant (skaa) women were not treated any worse than the men (except you won't see a noble woman raping a man, dunno why

) and there was a very strong theme of "this is exactly why the world is such a messed up place".
And there were several noblewomen who were mistings/mistborn and significantly major characters.
I also wonder why it mattered how weird the world is -- what with ash falling from the sky, the immortal Lord Ruler and superpowered nobility (as long as you forget the superpowered peasants, who are not really less common than the very much minority of superpowered nobility) -- when this was supposed to be a rant about sexism.