I can answer these for you now. There are women world leaders in the Avatar world during Korra’s present: Zuko’s daughter is the Fire Lord, and there is an Earth Queen ruling the Earth Kingdom.
As for Katara, there is no separate chief in the Southern Water Tribe: both tribes are officially ruled by a royal descendant (currently Unalaq), residing in the Northern Tribe. Prior to the Hundred Year War, I think there was more of a link between families in both tribes feeding into this ruling family, but the tribes have drifted apart and the chief residing in the North isn’t much more than a figurehead to the South. For the Southern Tribe, we always imagined there is a sort of “Council of Elders,” consisting of women and men, who jointly govern the South. I can imagine Katara takes part in that council, and I can also imagine she isn’t interested in being the chief of both tribes anyway.
While we’re on the subject of world leaders, I saw a comment on my dashboard after the Barnes & Noble signing from someone who was dissatisfied with the fact that we didn’t continue the Equalist plot in Book 2 and wrote something to the effect that we were just keeping the bending oppressors in power and sweeping the plight of the oppressed non-benders under the rug. This is definitely not the case. Our idea was that the Equalist revolution forced the United Republic Council (Tenzin included) to face the fact that the majority of the population was not being represented. As a result, they disbanded the council and held open elections, and Raiko, a non-bender, was elected as the president of the United Republic. Looking back, I do think we could have made that clearer, but I think we were probably trying not to bog down the premiere episode with what we refer to as stuff that’s getting too “Trade Federation-y,” since there was plenty to pack into that episode as it was.
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