The 'final girl' trope has nothing to do with "strong female characters". It's all about crafting a protagonist that can experience abject terror (screaming, blubbering, crying) as a surrogate for the audience. The theory was that teenage boys on dates (a significant market demographic for these films, especially at the time) wouldn't be as comfortable rooting for a male protagonist performing abject emotions, and slasher films don't work with a stoic, hyper-masculine male protagonist. Academics have been dismantling the "irony" of the "strong female lead" in slasher films for years now. Way less to do with female empowerment and much more to do with keeping boys comfortable and respecting established behavioral gender norms.

In other words, if a 13 year old boy on a date has to watch "Larry" Strode crying and running from Michael Myers, it might make him feel a bit "gay" in front of his date,