I don't consider them strong women....I consider them sad stereotypes.

Not to reanimate a WoT thread, but just to put my 2 cents in. I always found the WoT to have a nice interplay between the male and female characters, that reminded me of my grandparents and all of their sagely and gently condescending (on the other genders) advice.

I actually hated most of the female characters POVs for a number of the books, but thought that this was merely a result of being in the protagonist's POV so often (and the female characters all attempt to "fix" or "better" him so often).

The one exception was the Tuon character, whom I thought was intersting and smartly written. This character was one of the few that was strong and focused, and I felt that the character already knew her place in that world, and thus had focus and strength.

In the book just released (The Gathering Storm), I actually enjoyed the Egwene POV a lot.... this same clarity of the pervious Tuon POV came through....and though it was written by Sanderson, RJ's wife remained the main editor, and (RJ's words) driving force. This was a vast improvement on the previous books, where the female POVs all were aimed at showing women tricking (or pulling, or kicking, or convincing) the male characters to the right thing. Maybe it was just a matter of timing, that the main female characters were not fully fleshed out until more towards the end...when their role in that world was more clear to them (see the Matt character for the same issues/resolution)