I was told years ago that the accepted wisdom at SF/Fantasy publishing houses was "Girls will read stories about boys, but boys won't read stories about girls." This was obviously back in the days when the majority of fans were still geeky young males, though curiously most of the editors were females.
This was also back in the days (I remember them well) when it was possible to go all the way through high school English classes without being assigned more than one or at most two books by female writers. (And that one was usually "To Kill a Mockingbird" by the somewhat confusingly named Harper Lee.) This was in the US, I hasten to add. Teenagers in the UK may have been reading Jane Austen in class even then for all that I know. The point I am trying to make is that females in this part of the world were brought up in those days to feel quite comfortable reading about the male viewpoint, whereas young males were almost never exposed to books written by the opposite gender.
But the world has changed since then. There are lots more female SF/Fantasy readers and writers. Boys and girls alike grow up reading books by women as well as men. Also, periodically, SF/Fantasy publishing houses are reminded of the fact that more than half of the fiction readers, in this country at least, are women -- and they would dearly love to lure in a larger proportion of that particular market, away from the romance genre. Sadly, this sometimes means replacing one set of stereotypes for another.
I was greatly bemused when one reviewer spoke of "The Hidden Stars" as a feminist alternative to the standard fantasy novel, just because it includes some strong women among its cast of characters. It certainly doesn't address any gender issues, though it does have its share of powerful, confident females. So maybe the definition of feminism is changing, too.