Authority, power, respect, and obedience are not just motherhood issues. Let's take an example. In Japan they are supposedly moving to a more progressive stance by allowing a woman to become empress. Thus someone who could not hold and wield a specific position of power will. Would this have happened if she had not been held in respect? After all they haven't allowed it for the rest of their history.
It's a more progressive stance driven by the fact there are no male candidates to succeed the current Crown Prince when he becomes Emperor and eventually dies (other than his brothers who could be reasonably expected to die not long after him). There have no males born in the line of succession since 1965.
This article from two weeks ago is the most recent I could find and says that the Prime Minister is postponing his plans to change the law because the wife of Emperor Akahito's youngest son has just become pregnant. He is waiting to see if she has a boy and solves the problem for him.
Even if the law is changed the likely beneficiary is currently four years old (the daughter of the Crown Prince), so I'm not sure how much respect can be claimed for her. Media and public infactuation is a different matter however.
Oh and Japan has had eight Empresses but none since the 18
th Century, so the ban is a relatively recent development compared to the span of their Imperial history.
I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then
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