If we assume that there is a group of people giving a concerted effort to acknowledge women in general, would that not lead to more articles about women being created? And, purely statistically, would not this in turn lead to more articles about women being rejected for being insufficiently notable? There is no need to assume bias in Wikipedia editors, the bias could just as well lie with those people who create the many rejected articles.

Also, one criteria which Wikipedia must, by necessity, use, is “published articles in other media about the subject”. If other media are, in general, biased, this would lead to a dearth of articles in other media, which in turn would lead to Wikipedia rejecting new WP articles.

How is this statistical problem (which I’m prepared to acknowledge) an actual barrier preventing you from improving any given article?