shit Annie i think citing Yoko Ono or Linda McCartney would be setting female musicians back 50 years…
Sheila E when she took over drums for Prince… Carol Kaye since she played Bass for a ton of the Beach Boys stuff
Shonna Tucker, bass player for The Drive By Truckers (she joined after her singer/songwriter/guitarist husband Jason Isbell joined; they’ve since divorced and he’s left the band but she has stayed.)
I was going to say, in the 90s it seemed like you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a female bassist.
Ones that haven’t been mentioned yet:
The Pixies
Sonic Youth
My Bloody Valentine
The Dandy Warhols
Galaxie 500
Sheryl Crow was a guitar player for Michael Jackson for a while.
The Honeycombs. I think, perhaps, Honey Lantree pioneered the female drummer thing.
Admittedly, their only hit heavily featured her drumming, and she did sing on it (and presumably, the group was named for her), but she was not the lead singer, so I think they meet the criterion.
Also, from the same era, The Applejacks had a female bassist.
Come to think of it, didn’t The Doors have a female bassist in their early line-up? - Yep, Patricia Sullivan.
Did Gillian Gilbert ever sing lead with New Order? Everything I remember of theirs had male vocals.
How about Patti Scialfa in the E Street Band? She does sing, but I don’t know if she sings lead on anything.
I thought of another bassist: Gaye Avert of The Adverts.
And does Nancy Wilson of Heart count? In a sense they were a female dominated band, but with a majority of male musicians, I think, and Ann rather than Nancy was lead singer (though Nancy did share the spotlight quite a bit).
What I can’t seem to think of is any examples of a female lead guitarist playing for a male singer/frontman.
Sammy Hagar’s solo band has the amazingMona.
The B-52s
Eddie & the Cruisers 
Bri2k
David Bowie has Gail Ann Dorsey playing bass, and wisely so.
Regina Zernay Robertsplayed bass with Cowboy Mouth, now playing with Cee Lo Green. She’s fun and enthusiastic and all kinds of awesome live.
Flogging Molly and The Tossers both have female fiddle players in their line-ups, the rest of the respective band mates being male. (And both are pretty damn awesome.)
Prince has had any number of females backing him up, from Wendy and Lisa during the Revolution years, to Sheila E. to Candy Dulfer playing sax for him more recently, with a mess of women mixed in along the way.
The first one to pop into my head was Canadian 80s band, the Spoons, whose bass player is Sandy Horne.
The **Travis Larson Band **is an instumental trio, with Jennifer Young on bass. And this chick can shred it.
Add The Feelies to the list. I think a female bassist was required to get a union card back then ;).
I think that’s right. She might be credited with a co-lead in “Procession” but you have to go to the Other Two to hear her sing. She’s got a nice voice. Oddly, the only NO member to not have a lead vocal on a song AFAIK.
Breezy Peyton of The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band plays the washboard so hard that the band sells broken washboard fragments at their concerts.
Who hasn’t Sara Lee played with? During a radio interview, I was joking with her that you could play “Six Degrees of Sara Lee” connecting everyone in music through musicians she has played on stage with.
Gail and Sara may have been a couple.
That’s because nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee!