Actually they are kind of improving. 3 years ago there was maybe one (non civillian) female figure per Lego City wave. Last year we got one Charakter appearing in several sets & this summer wave we'll get 2 females per theme (space & deep sea exporation).
With licenced sets the problem appears that movies strongly concentrated (& actually still concentrate) on conservative role models. Reading the first ten main actors from the movie "Jurassic World" you'll only see one female(!!!).
However with this summer wave they really missed the Chance to also improve the proportion of females within the Star Wars line. You can't expect from a mainstream company 2 produce charakters exepct for Padme & Leia. But yes there's no excuse to not produce Padme. When I read the names of the sets for the summer wave I was absolutly sure that we will get a new Naboo Padme in either one of the sets. & extremly disapointet that we'll only geht the same old *****. I can not imagine how much more attractive the Speeder Set would be - if they included a Padme version we never had before..