The push for strong female characters may be detrimental to good female character writing as it misdiagnoses the problem

I'm open to having my perspective on this matter broadened although I'm having a hard time envisioning someone completely flipping my opinion on this.

Strength is unnecessary to writing a compelling character, and suggesting that a successful female character that should be held as a standard above other female characters must have physical strength, actively dissuades the agenda of good female character writing that it is trying to promote. Women in real life are not characterized by physical strength, and do not typically use it as a way of obtaining power or having influence on the world, so it shouldn't be a priority or a standard when writing fictional women either. Mulan is characterized by her ingenuity and ability to work around her physical limits using human determination, will, and inventiveness, not strength, if she were characterized by strength alone her message would fall flat. There are compelling elements to a strong female character of course, and strong characters are simply hype, I am not discouraging them, but I don't think they are a good metric or goal to have when writing female characters and should only be included if they are relevant to the story, as other characteristics would have a much better impact if prioritized.

I think there are a number of elements that make good character writing, but notably character complexity, character consistency, character motive, and underratedly, character agency. The problem with a lot of female characters that has been attributed to weakness is lack of agency, or more specific than that, effect on the story. Mikasa Ackerman from Attack on Titan is one of humanity's strongest, and while she used to be popular in the earlier arcs, she was reduced to a mascot that a large portion of the audience doesnt take seriously as a character by the finale. This has a lot to do with the couple episodes where she believed Eren was dead. Although Mikasa is humanity's strongest and she has complexity to her, her motives are very simple and not just that, they're reactive. Her goal is to protect Eren which means that she is not actively driving the plot, she is reacting to it. Where Eren goes, she goes, when eren is in danger, she works to rescue him. This is what makes her uninteresting, and distinguishes between an interesting and uninteresting character. An interesting character makes decisions that shape the plot, an uninteresting character's decisions are shaped by the plot. There are 2 episodes where Mikasa believes Eren dead and the audience gets to see how she responds, and the motives that drive her when Eren is removed, we see for the first time, Mikasa taking action and making decisions that alter the course of the story, we see how her mindset can be consistently applied without relying on Eren. This is when Mikasa became popular, and a model of a strong female character. Unfortunately her motives were reduced to the reactive form they were in as soon as Eren is reintroduced to the plot, and she becomes uninteresting again despite her strength.

A character's strength is not as compelling as their motivation, their decisions, and their impact. Physical strength being used as a stand in for good writing in female characters feels disingenuous like it's trying to slap a masculine band aid on the problem. And it causes writers to shoot their arrows at the wrong target when theyre writing their stories, so it does a lot of damage. A female character has the potential to embody the most conservatively feminine roles, and still be a role model or admirable or compelling character, they just need to have consistent and complex motivation and make decisions impacting the narrative that are consistent with their unique drive that demonstrate moral character worthy of emulating.

So yeah I think pushing for "strong female characters" in media is stupid.