I agree that the Wheel of Time is very flawed, although I disagree with you about the female characters. I find them very good, and it's just that the gender relations in this series are shot to hell.
Also, there are many and varied female characters. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's gender-equal, or near, in terms of viewpoint characters. This is incredible, especially for a series of its time. And it never felt shoehorned in, like he had to have a certain number of women. It's that he has characters, who are women. Each of them has their own personality, motivations, skills, flaws, backstory, et cetera.
It's a well crafted series in some regards, such as the worldbuilding, the prose (which could be purple at times, I know) the incredible number of characters, all of who are well developed (YMMV on this point, though.) He's just a very good writer.
For the plot, I'm more of a character person, so I find it easier to ignore the convolutions (although I agree about the miscommunication issues. It is soo frustrating!
And as people above mention, it redefined its genre and people tend to make allowances for that.
TL;DR: I know it's very flawed (probably the most flawed book I love, I haven't mentioned all of its issues here) but I can forgive it that.