@Al!naJames:
Oda has a lot of trouble writing and drawing female characters, he's admitted to it many times. There's hardly any average-looking females in One Piece, they all are either pretty, with roughly same face and same body for all, or ugly. None of his pretty females are ever truly evil and with ugly ladies taken in count, there's hardly any leading female villains at all. Even though females are weaker then males in real life due to their physical traits, there's still a lot of girls who do brutal sports, fighting, etc, and of course it's not an excuse when we're talking about Shounen Manga series. Oda can never pair up a female and a male character for a serious fight in OP (remember what happened with Zoro and Monet?) - it's always either a trickster-fight (Usopp vs Perhona) or female vs female.
When Oda started, he had designs for girls with robo-arms, operating huge axes, the very first villain we see was Alvida and whole thing about Zoro and Kuina was "you don't have to be a man to be strong, girls can kick asses too". Along the way something went wrong and now we have what we have… I wouldn't complain if it was always like that, but I'm mourning the good old days.
--- Update From New Post Merge ---
Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...
I always thought it was a sort of an artist choice to draw girls the same (Conan comes into mind), especially if you're a 90's author and especially so if you have a long currently running publication? But hey, I would like to know an author that matches all that, so if you can please help me with that, especially if the plot hasn't suffered. It's a fresh of breath air when he tried to progress in the way he draws women though. Old, ugly - pretty sure there are "ugly" nice women and "ugly" nasty women (same goes for "good looking") and evil, villains.. that sounds REALLY black and white, but you do realize more than the fact that this is a shonen, this is a shonen in a pirate era.
About Oda having designs on early Nami (saw it on tumblr), he probably thought it through and hit a dead end with it. Since this was brought up, I'll just go ahead with it (sorry). In my opinion, Nami dresses the way she does because Bellemere, her foster mother was a "I'll do anything I want" type of person since she was young. She was not shy about teasing men and using her body, even if she's like that she ended up raising Nami and Nojiko and taught them that a woman should be smart in this world of men. IN MY OPINION, that's a better lesson for girls than to sit around only knowing to raise your voice demanding equality from men (like a tsundere yelling at the guy she likes and he can't help but tease her) but hey I'm a guy so I wouldn't really fully understand, but feel free to hate me though.
For the fights, this might be long but it's something I wrote on another site:
The Monster trio is a balance when it comes to their attitude towards women. Zoro's attitude towards them are just a bit of Sanji's influence due to his constant nagging towards him about how women should be treated (this was touched on Punk Hazard when Zoro was gonna be fighting Monet) but he can also be as blunt as Luffy with Zoro telling Tashigi that he's just stronger than her. When Zoro and Sanji first "argued" during the Arlong Park arc (Zoro ready to rush at Nami and Sanji intercepts), the topic was about - yes women.
Just before the duel with Tashigi in Loguetown, Sanji tries to intervene, but Tashigi with her pride on the line tells Sanji to stay out of it, Zoro replying "You heard her" "Get going". While Tashigi is a woman, she follows the path of the sword (this topic was already stated to be a path much harder for women than men in Zoro's backstory). This means that, Zoro's attitude towards her is different. He respects her as a swordswoman but he can't help not wanting to fight her seriously being that Tashigi looks strikingly similar to his childhood friend/rival who died.
In Whiskey Peak, Zoro beat Ms. Monday, a woman that boasts her power and strength with nothing but just the same, his power and strength. He also has cut down (with the back of his sword) a woman and a child, showing mercy.
Now, with that in mind, Nami's navigational skills, Robin's intellectual skills, Zoro lacks what they have in the crew, he knows and respect that. During the Skypiea arc, Enel attacks Robin, Zoro rushes to catch her falling body and comments "She's a woman". Robin is by no means a swordswoman, nor was she a fully pledged part of the crew at that point (especially in Zoro's mind). What she was however, is a woman struck down mercilessly by someone much, much stronger than your average man.
His fight with Monet is the most interesting to me however, while he used Haki to distract her, he still made a cut on her cheeks. While Monet herself (and Tashigi) thinking he would not cut her, he did just that. While he showed her mercy (not using Haki), he didn't have problems giving Monet a traumatic experience.
To summarize his attitude towards women. Zoro has no problems fighting strong women, but does not like fighting weaker women. Zoro has no problem using his swords against women but does not like killing them. Zoro shows mercy but he has no problems inflicting trauma.
If you can't tell by now, the monster trio - unlike Luffy's attitude that men and women are all the same and Sanji's chivalrous, "will never kick a woman" attitude. Compared to those two, Zoro is very much, the neutral ground.
But yeah, for a "quick reply" this sure was a long ass reply.. sorry.