This is my pet subject (and women in sci fi more generally). Modern Trek, in spite of professing equality, has repeatedly failed to show this on screen. They suffer from what I like to deem 'token female syndrome' of having a couple of high profile women amidst a sea of men (although not as bad as Star Wars). Try counting the number of male and female characters. The Federation is just as bad as all the aliens - check out the ranks of the women who do appear to see how the chain of command promotes equal opportunities - I bet you will see stark inequalities at the top of the chain even if you ignore TOS.
TOS was actually less sexist for its time than modern Trek because it was quite avant garde to portray female officers at all. Unfortunately, they were too often portrayed as over-emotional and not very good at their jobs - sorry, I'll rephrase that - being too easily distracted by emotional concerns. Partly because Uhura was black, they avoided romantic involvements for her and generally portrayed her as being incredibly good at her job.
One TOS episode that portrays the good and the bad is the City on the Edge of Forever. They place Uhura in charge of the security search team (which was subversive as it placed a black woman in charge of a team of white men), but then Uhura goes all girly and confesses that she is frightened later on.
Another great character is Dr Ann Mulhall in Return to Tomorrow. She is an engineer, an astrobiologist, and a lieutenant-commander (making her the highest-ranking woman in TOS). She comes across as extremely capable but then spends much of the episode possessed by a much girlier character!
Our first female security officer is seen in TAS (sorry - I don't know the episode). Tash Yar came along in TNG but seemed to spend time worrying about her femininity (the Naked Now) and I think she was the ONLY female security officer we see until season 4! When she leaves she is replaced by a man but that's ok because they can introduce another character to replace her, right? Yup - a bartender. Guinan is great but she hardly strikes a blow for feminism. We often see peripheral female characters outside the command structure (Keiko, Kassidy, Kes (although she is balanced by Neelix), Seven etc) but this may just be a bi-product because we have more men within the command structure and they don't want every character relationship to be between officers (so you have Kira and Bariel in DS9 for comparison).
The first season of TNG tried a bit with a female chief engineer alongside Yar (McDougal I think - who came across as rather stupid) but when the actress was unavailable to reprise the role we had a succession of men before Geordi was passed the role.
There were a few minor recurring female guest stars before Ro Laren came along. Her character marked a change as a major character for whom her background was far more important than her gender. This was carried across into DS9 where we have lots of admirable female roles but still outnumbered 2:1 by the men. Admiral Nechayev in TNG was an extremely good character too she was very business-like in her approach to command, often shown to tow the party line and follow orders even if she agreed with Picard i.e. professional and not emotional - in fact Natalia Nogulich's performance is icily authoritative! Kai Opaka and Kai Winn in DS9 were pretty impressive characters too.
Voyager fumbled the ball a bit though. Personally I loved Janeway as a character but nobody noticed that she only wanted men in her command team: she has a male XO, male security chief, male chief helmsman, male chief ops, and wanted Lt Carey as her chief engineer (she was against Belanna's promotion initially). The CMO who was killed was also a man (although admittedly the original chief helmsman was a woman and we don't know about the original chief engineer but still - she isn't a very inclusive captain). Seven was cool (borg implants and all if you know what I'm saying) but she was almost a man and it was the decision to axe Kes instead of Kim that led to the character we got, which is so strange as replacing Kim with a woman would have balanced the cast properly.
Enterprise took a step backwards by only having two women, one of whom was not part of the Federation command structure initially. Very few of the recurring characters in the show were women at all.
The most recent Trek film took yet another step backwards. Its hands were tied somewhat by the sexism of TOS but made little effort to portray any of the high profile female characters that did exist. So we have Uhura (now also a love interest) two mothers, and a student in her underwear to fly the flag for feminism. Pike's female first officer is replaced by Spock, the Vulcan leadership is not represented by T'Pau, and two of the three recurring characters from TOS (Chapel and Rand) were absent (apart from Chapel's name check). This could be because the aging actresses were sidelined (due to various factors) in the more recent movies (and Rand's re-introduction in TMP never quite took hold).
Check the bar against the modern re-interpretation of Battlestar Galactica. I will admit I haven't done a head count but there seems to be a much more even balance of males and females in the show (and avid fans complained because some male characters had been replaced with females). I think Trek should aim for this level of inclusiveness by focusing on an almost entirely female supporting cast (for speaking roles). I think if they did this people would be surprised to find that the male/female ratio would still only just about break even.
Hope that helps!
TOS was actually less sexist for its time than modern Trek because it was quite avant garde to portray female officers at all. Unfortunately, they were too often portrayed as over-emotional and not very good at their jobs - sorry, I'll rephrase that - being too easily distracted by emotional concerns. Partly because Uhura was black, they avoided romantic involvements for her and generally portrayed her as being incredibly good at her job.
One TOS episode that portrays the good and the bad is the City on the Edge of Forever. They place Uhura in charge of the security search team (which was subversive as it placed a black woman in charge of a team of white men), but then Uhura goes all girly and confesses that she is frightened later on.
Another great character is Dr Ann Mulhall in Return to Tomorrow. She is an engineer, an astrobiologist, and a lieutenant-commander (making her the highest-ranking woman in TOS). She comes across as extremely capable but then spends much of the episode possessed by a much girlier character!
Our first female security officer is seen in TAS (sorry - I don't know the episode). Tash Yar came along in TNG but seemed to spend time worrying about her femininity (the Naked Now) and I think she was the ONLY female security officer we see until season 4! When she leaves she is replaced by a man but that's ok because they can introduce another character to replace her, right? Yup - a bartender. Guinan is great but she hardly strikes a blow for feminism. We often see peripheral female characters outside the command structure (Keiko, Kassidy, Kes (although she is balanced by Neelix), Seven etc) but this may just be a bi-product because we have more men within the command structure and they don't want every character relationship to be between officers (so you have Kira and Bariel in DS9 for comparison).
The first season of TNG tried a bit with a female chief engineer alongside Yar (McDougal I think - who came across as rather stupid) but when the actress was unavailable to reprise the role we had a succession of men before Geordi was passed the role.
There were a few minor recurring female guest stars before Ro Laren came along. Her character marked a change as a major character for whom her background was far more important than her gender. This was carried across into DS9 where we have lots of admirable female roles but still outnumbered 2:1 by the men. Admiral Nechayev in TNG was an extremely good character too she was very business-like in her approach to command, often shown to tow the party line and follow orders even if she agreed with Picard i.e. professional and not emotional - in fact Natalia Nogulich's performance is icily authoritative! Kai Opaka and Kai Winn in DS9 were pretty impressive characters too.
Voyager fumbled the ball a bit though. Personally I loved Janeway as a character but nobody noticed that she only wanted men in her command team: she has a male XO, male security chief, male chief helmsman, male chief ops, and wanted Lt Carey as her chief engineer (she was against Belanna's promotion initially). The CMO who was killed was also a man (although admittedly the original chief helmsman was a woman and we don't know about the original chief engineer but still - she isn't a very inclusive captain). Seven was cool (borg implants and all if you know what I'm saying) but she was almost a man and it was the decision to axe Kes instead of Kim that led to the character we got, which is so strange as replacing Kim with a woman would have balanced the cast properly.
Enterprise took a step backwards by only having two women, one of whom was not part of the Federation command structure initially. Very few of the recurring characters in the show were women at all.
The most recent Trek film took yet another step backwards. Its hands were tied somewhat by the sexism of TOS but made little effort to portray any of the high profile female characters that did exist. So we have Uhura (now also a love interest) two mothers, and a student in her underwear to fly the flag for feminism. Pike's female first officer is replaced by Spock, the Vulcan leadership is not represented by T'Pau, and two of the three recurring characters from TOS (Chapel and Rand) were absent (apart from Chapel's name check). This could be because the aging actresses were sidelined (due to various factors) in the more recent movies (and Rand's re-introduction in TMP never quite took hold).
Check the bar against the modern re-interpretation of Battlestar Galactica. I will admit I haven't done a head count but there seems to be a much more even balance of males and females in the show (and avid fans complained because some male characters had been replaced with females). I think Trek should aim for this level of inclusiveness by focusing on an almost entirely female supporting cast (for speaking roles). I think if they did this people would be surprised to find that the male/female ratio would still only just about break even.
Hope that helps!
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If they were to make a character lesbian, it should have better been one of the girlier characters - why not Leeta, or Ezri, or Kes or Hoshi? 
