Does JKR's portrayal of women combat sexism?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 41490

 Judy Serenity said on OT Chatter:

The first point was that if JKR wanted to combat sexism and 
raise thestatus of women, she should have had plenty of 
sympathetic,interesting female characters, and devoted lots of 
pages to them(regardless of whether they were in traditionally 
female roles ortraditionally male roles.) A passing reference to 
some femaleMinister of Magic hundreds of years ago doesn't 
help girls any. <<

I don't think it would be that simple. The wizarding world is no 
utopia: anyone who can be oppressed and downtrodden, will be. 
So, if women in the wizarding world have more freedom or status 
than their Muggle or real life counterparts, it's only because they 
have more power relative to men, and they have more power 
because, well, they're witches.  Nice for them, but not much of an 
example for the rest of us, no matter how many of them there 
are. If it takes magic for a woman to be competitive with men, we 
non-magical females are just out of luck, and that message 
would only be reinforced if there were more powerful witches in 
the story. 

Fortunately, JKR's own career provides more inspiration than a 
thousand Ministry witches. 

Pippin