The Guns of Fort Petticoat (1957)

A Texas-born Yankee soldier (Murphy) returns home to protect his village from a squad of marauding Comanche Indians. With the men of the village away fighting in the war, the soldier rallies the women to fight.
It's a progressive idea for a western of the era; there are a few romantic scenes but they're much less frequent than I feared, and the only blatant sexist remark was courtesy of a privileged white woman.
The male character being in charge doesn't seem odd because he's the one that's military trained (in real life, too), but the women hold their own - killing and dying is not the preserve of men, after all.
As was often the case, the Indians are mostly of the cookie cutter type in the script, but it at least addresses the atrocities of both sides.

3 skirts tucked out of 5