The North was Ruled by a Woman at Some Point in History (Spoilers Extended)

It is consistently shown that one of the unwritten rules or codes in the North is that the man who passes the sentence, should swing the sword.

Bran had no answer for that. "King Robert has a headsman," he said, uncertainly.

"He does," his father admitted. "As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

"One day, Bran, you will be Robb's bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is." -AGOT, Bran I

With that in mind, take a look at Bran's vision:

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood. -ADWD, Bran III

This is almost an exact mirror of what Bran sees in his first chapter (minus the heart tree) of AGOT. As we have the Kings of Winter all in the crypts, it would probably be known if there was a Queen in the North or Queen of Winter.

So while this could just be a minor inconsistency or its possible it was pre Stark/Winterfell or that it was from a different location in the north/beyond the wall that wasn't ruled by the Starks, I still thought this was pretty interesting. Especially since it most likely happened at Winterfell due to the rest of the vision.

TLDR: Since the Stark's follow the rule "the man who casts the sentence must swing the sword" and Bran's vision shows a white haired woman executing a man with a sickle in front of a heart tree, that means a woman was in power in the North at some point in history