I don't think anyone said either role was superior to the other. 

I do think the reaction is wildly disproportional. 
Your first post was in response to a T-shirt that someone happened to have worn 7 years ago. Yet it's the kind of response that I would give to something if they had some wide marketing campaign - spend 6 or 12 months saying that Star Wars is only for women, and the next Jedi is going to be wearing a pink dress.  

I could understand a response like that. 

Disney has been struggling on and off with most of their demographics. Even on the animated side, they've had a lot of struggles. Pixar has basically had 1 big success in the past 5 years.  

I think the reality of these struggles is not driven by Disney's motivations, I think it's just fundamentally challenging to make something really good in the first place, and it's challenging to continue something.  

As you mentioned yourself, some Star Wars fans don't even like George Lucas's changes in the prequel trilogy. I would guess the reason isn't that George Lucas decided he didn't like his fans.

How much harder do you think it is when you try to pass off a franchise to a completely different group of people - who might not have the talent or they might have found something appealing with the original that is very different from most fans.

Or how hard it is in general to build on something? How many stories have poor sequels? It seems like it is very hard to come up with a great idea for a story and characters in the first place, and it seems like it is even harder for creators to expand on those ideas in a meaningful way that is as well loved. It is pretty rare for a sequel to be as critically acclaimed as the original. The Godfather 2 seems like a rare exception, only for Godfather 3 to be talked about very poorly.  

None of this requires any kind of indifference or malice towards a fanbase.  

"Having female characters doesn't make a story interesting for women."

Of course not, but somebody should tell that to Disney. They are the ones who released a miniseries of 9 episodes featuring ONE male Jedi in the entire series. When I try to racionalize that decision the only reason I can come up with is that they are trying to attract women. Now, if you have a better theory, I'd be happy to hear it.

"Look at the first female characters that come to your mind when you think of Star Wars. Leia and Padme. Two extremely shallow characters whose arcs are always somewhere in between damsel in distress and trophy wife. They're both there just to serve as plot devices for the male heroes. "

And most males characters in stories written for women are there just to serve as a plot device for the heroine's story. That's just human nature. It is okay if you don't like it, but don't come here trying to imply that there is something wrong with it. There is not. Some companies might feel the need to try to change it (encouraged by the few of you who make it seem like your numbers are way bigger than they really are) but soon enough they bump into reality, and then we have articles like this.

I'm arguing you don't need to say it for it to be the case. 

Here's a hypothetical. What if I said women's role is to lead and innovate and men's role was to do dishes and laundry? I haven't said that either is superior but I think we can figure it out without it being stated. 

I will never in a million years understand why so many companies continue to seemingly utterly despise the very franchises they're working on as well as a large portion of the fan base, then scratch their heads when said fanbase inevitably leaves them. Nintendo does the same thing these days (just in different ways).

Nintendo's audience don't seem to be leaving them.

It is if you think so. What you're essentially trying to say is that choices women typically make are of less value than choices men typically make. Why do they have less value? Because women choose to do so? Did the value of doing the laundry rise when it was a men doing it? 

They are. It's just everytime people do so, Nintendo re-invents itself.

They haven't "reinvented themselves" as you put it for some time now, and there's no sign people are leaving.

Sometimes, they aren't actually confused. Sometimes, it's not on accident.