In the Éowyn thing, I believe I must disagree. We are way too used to see things from the US Marines point of view. LOTR is a tale about heroes, and heroes have the freedom of genre to behave differently. Otherwise Boromir wouldn't have been such an idiot to start a journey to an unknown location alone. For that, he was much too important a person.

But Tolkien was using the legend motiv of a lonely hero going on a quest, not writing a story about military intelligence. We should measure Éowyn the same way we measure the males. It always make me sad that it's usually women who try to make the only female hero of the entire trilogy look bad.