Regressing to Sexism?

In the sexism lectures and tutorials I had a hard time finding examples of non sexist/ less sexist representations of women. When examples did come to me they were either very recent or from my childhood (late 1990's). So I began to think about some of my favorite games from those times, and the representation of women in them.

In Final Fantasy IV the main character is Cecil, however the player has the option to toggle between party member as your avatars as you travel the world. This option was lacking from later games from the series, such as how players in FF VII only had the option to be whomever the game let you, with the only female representation being (the highly sexualised) Tifa for a short amount of time, and she was only available when both Cloud AND Cid were not in the party.

Final Fantasy has made some progress in terms of story though. In earlier games women were of the "save me", the "love intrest/ triangle" and the "crazy/bitchy" variety. FF IV had Rosa and Rydia both needing to be saved by Cecil and his menfolk at different points of the story. VII even had all three, with the 'holy princess' and focus of Cloud's love in Aerith, the love triangle was completed by Tifa, while Yuffie was the cute girl who totally betrays and manipulates the whole party for her own gain (right from her inception till the materia stealing section). VIII's female characters were fairly weak from a story point of view, and even the female antagonists were stereotypes of the witch variety. They all palyed on the female manipulation idea as well, as you find the built up antagonist a sorceress was being manipulated by a 'space witch', who was manipulated by a 'future witch' (which all happened in about 5% of game time: LAZY STORY TELLING!). From this point we have progressed to the "secret heroine" of Yuna in FFX, and the all female cast (although again highly sexualised) in FFX-2. However I would argue that the best representation of women in a FF series game would be in V. Faris is the strongest member of party, although she does hide being a female early game, who has rejected the 'princess role' in order to become a bad-ass pirate captain. And all the female character can take on the same roles as their male counterparts in battle due to the job system (meaning you didn't have to be all manly and protect the squishy females, in fact they could protect the squishy males if you so desired). As such i think the FF series has only just returned to the levels of equality from earlier games, but in no way am I saying that its entirely equal.

Another of my favourite games from the late 90's was the original Tenchu (although I cannot talk about development of the series, because I didn't play the sequels after  hearing many bad things). In the original at least she was a strong female complete with 'found abandoned' backstory. She is actually heralded as having greater potential than her male counterpart Rikimaru. Her clothing style was far more practical and less sexualised than would be expected of a stereotypical 'ninja chick'.

The last game from the period is Dragon Valor, which remains a favourite of mine. The story has 3 arcs it takes, all featuring female playable characters as a large proportion, and all equally tough as their male counterparts.

Apologies but due to internet troubles and trying to get this in on time, I will have to add pictures and elaborate further later.