Hannah,
The person who has most impressed me in my career was a former ATA pilot, Joan Hughes. I spent a fantastic summer being trained by her in PA28s for an Assistant Instructor's Rating. She was inspirational - simple as that.
Years later, I had occasion to fly with, and carry out simulator check/refreshers on several female First Officers on long-haul jet aircraft. In my own experience, the lady pilots were universally professional, personable, and technically very good indeed. Maybe my two fleets were lucky, but I heard much the same from pals on shorthaul fleets.
Perhaps the ladies were so good because they had 'tried harder' to get into the business - I don't know. Heaven knows, most of us blokes found it difficult.
The most common fear I heard from older pilots before the first ladies arrived in the airline was that a woman of slight stature would be unable to 'hold' a heavy jet straight following an engine failure at rotation. Goodness knows how many times I saw that in the simulator, but I never saw a problem at all.
It is perhaps because of the ATA pilots, like Joan, that even the 'old' wartime pilots did not seem to be prejudiced in any way. My generation certainly were not (born 1950!
).