The dystopic futures of Cyberpunk 2020 etc. predicted a world run by megacorporations, but those were always the heavy industry, energy industry or weapons industry, with their private armies. The real 2020s dystopia bad guys are entertainment companies like Disney and Hasbro (and of course, Microsoft, Google and Meta) who don’t need private armies because we want to love them.
Yeah. Howard’s “Sword Woman” looks like it was written in today’s “woke” culture, and would be a strong contender for a Hugo award if it had been written this decade. Very underappreciated, when most Howard critics love to point out the obviously sexualized stories which Howard wrote in order to pay his mother’s hospital bills, as he knew the publisher would be more likely to publish stuff with nude women in it.
Red Sonya of Rogatino (in Shadow of the Vulture) and Valeria (Red Nails) were strong, independent warrior women, too. Sure, Valeria got her “damsel in distress” moments but redeemed herself pretty well in the end. Conan himself was saved by women in multiple occasions, most famously Zenobia in The Hour of the Dragon. Bêlít is somewhat more questionable, she was more worshiped like a goddess of sex than served as a pirate captain - but she was still a character who was obviously in control, even if the weapons she used weren’t swords (or, I guess “swords” were what gave her the power over her followers that she had…)…
But in Tolkien’s defense, please let’s not forget Eowyn from Lord of the Rings. She may not have been a major point-of-view character, but she did play a major role.