Women despots, historically, can often be far worse than the men, is that not true? Only know of one Chinese Empress who was pretty bad.
Justinian's Empress Theodora comes to mind. Procopius wrote a book, The Secret History, about her antics, secret because he knew what would happen to him if she ever caught wind of it. It's...vivid...
You may be on to something, depending on the Asian culture. Typically male oriented, and females are treated as second class. So a female needs to be sterner to maintain control.
My wife is Chinese-American and was an I.T. manager in charge of a large data center before retiring. No problem with her male white, hispanic and black employees. But she had problems with some Asian male employees, particularly those born in China. They called her a dragon lady, and often clashed with her so she had to be tougher on them. One she fired initiated a lawsuit against her and the company, charging racism. But my wife documented everything and HR sided with her and the suit was dismissed. When she fired that Chinese guy, he fought the company security guards and SFPD police were called in to drag him out. He just could not accept that a female was ordering him to do things. After he was dragged out, my wife got lots more respect from the Asians.
The Empress Dowager was actually a defender of the peasants. It’s the leftist intellectuals who slandered her. Pearl S. Buck wrote a biography of her that set the record straight.
Mao’s wife was a horror in her own right.
She was known as the “white bone demon”.
The last Chinese Empress, Dowager Cixi, came to power in 1906. She was pretty much hated by her subjects.