“On the subject of writing a fantasy book where women are forced to accept a lesser role to men, I have to confess to being guilty of that.”

Well, fair enough—I certainly don’t think writers should be restricted from writing what they want to write. Certainly not every book or series should take place in an egalitarian society.

You in particular seem to be thinking through why your society is the way that it is, and that’s tremendously important. I think problems of racism and sexism in fantasy stem from people just not thinking about it—ignorance, rather than malice, an institutional sort of attitude rather than a few guys in white hoods sitting in a board room somewhere. (Interestingly, the board room scenario sounds a lot more like the plot of your trilogy!)

If every writer were a lot more mindful of these things, and didn’t automatically go with their first instincts, which will always default toward “sameness,” the genre would be a lot more diverse and a lot more interesting already.