Well, it depends on what you take out of the Buddhist stories, because I have also read that when someone questioned him concerning one of his nuns' discourses, he said that he would not have taught in any other way. So, I think this is quite positive really when he is talking about this woman's wisdom.
The fact that he actually gave ordination to women proves that he was quite friendly to women. He gave women that opportunity. This was quite radical, too, in the Buddha's day. Sometimes there is a tendency to take contemporary society, and how society works today, and our values, and transport this back and put it onto two and a half thousand years ago, not understanding the society and the traditions of that time. The Buddha had to be quite careful in how he treated women, because of their role at that time. There are, as far as talking friendly or positive about women, times when he did talk about some of women's failings, and the difficulties they may have in becoming enlightened, due to their nature, but he also talked about some of men's failings, too. So we try not to take that personally.
As far as an enlightened person talking in this way, we will take the question to Prince Abhaya, "If your child, on your lap, was choking on something, and you saw them choking, would you try to get that object out of their throat, even if you had to draw blood?" And Prince Abhaya answered, "Yes, I would try to get that out of their throat, even if I had to draw blood" And he asked, "Why would you do that?" "Because I have Compassion for the child". He didn't want the child to choke.
I'll go a little bit deeper into this, sometimes when people read about the extra requirements he gave to women to be ordained, again they are approaching it, in our opinion, from contemporary society, not understanding the society the Buddha was in. Women in Indian society didn't have much status at all, they didn't have much freedom at all. Also, ordaining at that time was very dangerous. If wandering in the woods, there were other people who were robbers, etc. who could harm women in some way, because we have a weaker body. So he made different rules for the women, to help protect them.
One of them is to show reverence to the monks. Having understood sometimes the different characters of men and women, I see sometimes men have a tendency towards conceit, and don't like to be challenged in any way. And with having a stronger body, this could be quite difficult for women if the women challenged them in any way as far as status goes. Understanding the benefits of humility, he may have understood that it didn't hurt the women in any way to show humility, and that this would protect them perhaps from men's conceit. Especially when there were not as many enlightened people around in the Sangha. Being a teacher myself, I have observed a lot of different characteristics, of both men and women. I have a great appreciation towards the wisdom of the Buddha.
There is also a story about Ananda being the one to convince the Buddha that he should ordain women, and people taking it as the Buddha having resistance, because he didn't like women. However, if the Buddha had infinite wisdom, why would someone have to convince him? If he knew the future, he knew he was going to let them in. I see it more as a test for the women.
These women who wanted to first ordain, they were from a royal family, they were used to comfort. And so he might have tested them. He refused to ordain them in the beginning, and he left straight away and they had to walk after him. They shaved their heads and they went after him, and suffered a great deal of hardship on the way, and this was a great test for them. As Ananda also helped the Bhikkhunis quite a lot, it may have been a test of his Compassion, as well. So we can view it in different ways, this is a different view, we don't have to view the Buddha as having any unfriendly attitude toward women. We believe it is a viewpoint, which cannot actually be proven, to say that the Buddha was unfriendly or not very positive about women as there are many different perspectives.
In the conversation with Ananda, Ananda asked him, "Do women have the potential to become enlightened?" And he said, "Yes." This is quite positive, because especially in Indian society at that time, there was the idea that women had no potential, and that they had to actually be reborn as a man to become enlightened. Or, even worse, if their husband died, they had to throw themselves in the fire after the husband, and this was the only way that they were going to save themselves. So compared to this, I think the Buddha was quite positive. It helps to understand more about Indian society at the time of the Buddha.
It may also help to understand that we test our students, also.