How does the QUN do in terms of gender equality

It appears that women and men are equal in importance, but fill separate roles in society. Even in jobs where both men and women work (like the Ben Hassrath), they have different specialties.

Everyone under the Qun, male or female, is considered to be parts of the same body: harm to one is harm to all.

Other than the mandate that certain roles shall be filled only be certain sexes(or people who identify as that sex), the Qun is pretty good in terms of equality. One of the Salasari, the Arigena, is always female just like the Arishok is always male, while the final member the Ariqun can be either.

They don't seem to value one gender above another, but they do assign everyones role that they have to fulfill or be punished, and gender plays a part in that.

Your a male warrior who wants to be a baker? Suck to be you.
A female baker who wants be a warrior? Tough.
A transman who wants to do government administration? Either they're put in a male role they don't want or get it and spend the rest of their lives being treated as the wrong gender.

So no not really gender equal, instead of any gender being able to try for any role, they are assigned and if your desired role doesn't match your gender your either not getting it or getting
misgendered.

And of course if you refuse your assigned role and don't manage to escape as Tal Vashoth you get to be "fixed", and if the brain washing won't work you get turned into mindless, will-less slave laborers.

The Quns pretty nasty really.

I'm not sure how the Qun is portrayed as open-minded in Inquisition. I think Iron Bull is fooling himself or trying to convince himself it is, more than anything. As for the Qun - it's equal opportunity oppression/suppression/repression so, yay?  It's interesting that we haven't seen any female saarebas yet though....

And the problem is:
The people are not trees.

And this is why I not try to judge in great detail.

We have actually, albeit just in multiplayer. 

dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Hissera

I do. While its philosophy as such doesn't necessarily result in the kind of oppression we know of, that turning dissidents into mindless slaves is a generally accepted practice is enough to condemn this particular realization of an ultra-collectivist society.

I wonder if anyone else sees some similarity between the Qun and this:

"...sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists."

May sound a bit uncomfortable, but not really evil, right? Just as the Qun sounds from its religious texts, I suspect. However, the source is...

At the least, the Qun is a severely unbalanced, extremist philosophy, and in its current implementation I condemn it for the practices by which it suppresses individuals and its warlike expansionism. That there is little to no gender inequality doesn't make it any better.


Edit:
Note that Tevinter is an example of the other extreme: might makes right applied to an individualistic perspective. There is (effectively) nothing that curbs the power of a Tevinter mage except a more powerful one, and even in non-mage society my impression is that individual ambition runs unchecked and right over others where people feel they can get away with it. It is no wonder that for some, life under the Qun appears more bearable.

I don't get the sense that the Qun is being politically correct, I think they're just being extremely compartmentalized in their thinking. They're not letting a woman fulfill a male role because they are being sensitive to her desires, it's more she is most useful in this role, therefore she is really a male because only males fulfill that role best. They sound like they're going to make that round peg fit in a square hole by ignoring the trivial details like sex if the talent is enough.

They could probably stick Cassandra as a Ben-Hassrath. And similarly if they found a man who was really good at administration I wouldn't be surprised if there are logistics type roles in the army for men.

Actually, very collectivist communities exist among humans on Earth as well, and some people like it there. I'm not judging the philosophy of the Qun - although I don't like it at all - but the way they put it in practice. If the qunari just exiled their dissidents and didn't want to conquer for world for the Qun I would still fight them politically and culturally, but I'd have little case for condemnation. Not before I knew more about how it all came about, at least.

Also, I agree with you that the Qun is fascinating, exactly because it feels so alien. I can see that and appreciate its existence in this fictional world, so that we can explore it, but that doesn't mean I can't dislike it.