I'm not sure this is the venue for a discussion of Sutcliff and female characters, so I'll try to be brief. a) I have pretty different issues about Sutcliff and women (mainly revolving around how she treats mothers and overtly sexual women, even in later books which she wrote well overlapped with the feminist movement and the rise of genre fiction with female protaginists) and b) I think a lot of it's a generational thing. I've noticed that younger Sutcliff fans, who grew up on narratives where women were fully present and often protagonists, tend to pick up on the same stuff that bugs me, and older Sutcliff fans who grew up identifying with male adventurers, tend to not have those issues.

Also, I don't think presenting a diversity of female characters sympathetically is incompatible with historical accuracy. History was full of women with different personality types who were loved by their family and friends. Since recorded history tends to focus on men of rank, power, and wealth, I think that's all the more reason for historical fiction--especially fiction like Sutcliff's, which doesn't usually focus on famous figures--to portray the rest of society. To some extent Sutcliff does that, but there are certain female types that I get the impression she had Issues with, and I'm not very comfortable with that. I think that's more of a product of the time she was writing in (and by the end of her career, earlier formed habits) than of the settings she wrote about.

(Although I am not saying I think Sutcliff should have written about anachronistic female adventurers, mind!)