Yeah, so far only Daen was treated as a co-protagonist. All of the others were just sidekicks (May (kinda), Iris, Bonnie, Lillie, Mallow, and Lana), characters with their own goals in mind (Serena) or were just background material (Misty).
I'm all for a female protagonist that does more but for that, the producers need to give them a chance. Misty was planned to have a bigger, deeper backstory, but the producers just said, that she only has to be sweet eye candy for male viewers. BTW. This information I got from Serebii, so I'm not 100% sure if this is true, but it would explain a lot.
The producers just have to get away from the usual template for female characters, only then there might be a chance to finally get a female character that is for once different in terms of design, role or personality.