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"For female characters, likability is a nagging problem."

I hear you. That has often been my experience as a novelist.
In film and literature as well as among CEOs and coworkers it seems the unreliable narrator, the anti-hero, the tragic hero(ine) or women protagonists with any darker elements (such as having a truly human complexity with moral ambiguities) are deemed unlikable by editors - or rather marketing teams who have not even read the screenplay or (horrors) a whole novel! Well, the editors et al may love the writing and perhaps even love the character but fear that elusive Consumer out there somewhere in "Middle America" - someone they believe wrongly or rightly is a frustrated repressed woman and a little naive/dumb or simplistic/moralistic but alas buys most of the books in this country and so must be pleased and all writing must be censored to please.
Read the great article at HuffPo