But go back in time several hundred years and I am pretty sure you'll find that women in most cultures were pretty much outright sold into marriages. Not that it was right, but RJ was following an historical precedent, with his own spin on it. If you think about this in conjunction with his statement of there being equality between the sexes he's not too far off... at least in relative terms. WOT men are far closer to equal that 16th/17th century women in our own world were. Hell there are many cultures today where WOT men have more equality than real world women.

I don't think RJ was a sexist, I think he was portraying a world with a skew toward women in power, but not a massive skew. Some cultures have a large imbalance (Arad Doman, Far Madding, Altara) while others are all but equal. Many WOT societies are equal (or close to): Andor, Borderlands, Cairhein, Aiel, Tear, Illian, Seanchan, Geahldan, Murrandy, Tarabon, Amadicia ... none of these nations/groups have exhibited overt sexism, we've seen powerful men and women from each of these cultures, and while there are many instances of small towns showing women being the obvious center of power, that's not unheard of even in today's societies in our own world, even in countries as seemingly "equal" as the United States or the UK.