Dystopian Chicklit
In reply to absentnormality (msg # 1):
I'm not really sure why it wouldn't work, unless the definitions of the Chick Lit genre are a lot stricter than I'm imagining. Couldn't you describe Jane Eyre as Dystopian Chick-Lit, as a novel about the struggle of womanhood in repressively patriarchal society? Someone more familiar with the genre correct me, but couldn't this be done explored by any combination of focusing on mundane, day-to-day life and interpersonal relationships in a dystopian setting (as opposed to a primary focus on the espionage/action/physical conflicts) and having patriarchal forces or old and new ideas about womanhood be prominent thematic ideas?
I feel like I'm leaning too far into post-apocalypse as a source for dystopian settings, but Unhallowed Metropolis presents a post-zombie apocalypse setting where humanity has retreated into fortress cities with Victorian styles and values, rubbing shoulders with a number of quieter horrors under a ruthless, frightened sort of martial law. It's retro-futuristic goth-punk, with Jekyll, Frankenstein, Moreau, and Tesla style mad science being the source of most technology, Bedlam levels of psychiatric care in world where psychics gain frightening powers that exacerbate the symptoms of associated mental illness when they use them, hauntings are as common as pest infestations and parapsychologists are ghostbusters by way of the Addams' family, classes are deeply stratified and secret societies are everywhere, et cetera et cetera. It's a setting that revels a little too much in "everything is evil and ugly and doomed," but drawing the focus back to women who live in this world, in their overlapping social circles, and make it more about real human beings living out their lives amidst awful things than about caricatures of awful people, and you could definitely have something interesting.
I can imagine a "party" of characters- the aspiring Alienist(the setting's word for psychiatrists) striving to help people but constantly tempted to wield the dark kind of political power her position gives her to break down obstacles in other parts of her life, while simultaneously facing the discrimination and biases that follow women in academia. The land-rich noblewoman from a bankrupt family putting off a political pairing, who knows more than she wants to about the depraved side of aristocratic society. The psychic investigator trying to root out corruption without becoming a tool in it by the people who employ her. The medium forced to play up the spooky mystic act if she wants business in her part of town- does something like that miss the mark?
Maybe an urban fantasy story in a setting similar to Pact (Worm's successor by the same author), where practitioners live and work and gather power in a modern-day setting, but one where the supernatural side of things hosts too many creatures that predate women's rights, and where old, oppressive traditions still hold a kind of power in and of themselves.
Just a couple of ideas. Is that anything like what you're looking for?
There's also an RPG coming out called the Watch, which is about an all-woman (and femme nonbinary) military force that's come together in a low-fantasy setting to protect their tribes from a dark force that tends to represent an embodiment of misogyny, patriarchy, and toxic masculinity.