Unfortunately there is not much outside of Islamic sources of contemporary scholarship. There are works from the Umayyad period on it, but I doubt they would suffice for you.
Yes, there is not much besides Muslim sources to work on. Epigraphic material and pre-Islamic poetry add to it somewhat, but:
1) pre-islamic poetry, even when authentic (and I lean to broadly accept it is largely authentic) must be regarded as a "Muslim" source because of the circumstances of its transmission, namely, what came down to us was selected largely by Muslim literati.
2) epigraphy offers scanty material for the couple centuries before the Hijra, and the first decades after it, if compared to the relative wealth of inscriptions from earlier (and later) periods. It is also not a very good source for assessing the women's status.
Generally speaking, the bits of evidence known to me point to the following:
1- Women could have a public social role in at least some Arabian societies before Islam, a possibility they kept afterwards. Female poets and even warriors are mentioned in sources for both periods; evidence also suggests that women could be autonomous economic actors, a fact that is very prominent in Islamic times, but appears to have occurred in Arabia before. This public role was probably never the norm, though.
2- Women had generally an inferior social status - this also largely remained the case after Islam.
3- Sex-selective infanticide and/or ritual saxcrifice is mentioned, and very strongly condemned, in the Qur'an.
4- The Qur'anic inheritance law probably improved the economic position of women, although we are not sure because we don't know the details of the earlier situation. It is possible that at least in some circumstances, it was possible for women to inherit.
5- Regulation and control of female sexuality was a significant social concern before Islam, and such remained - note however that the Qur'an and Prophetic Hadith do not dedicate much space to the topic. Some form of seclusion is likely to have existed before Islam for high-status women (note: seclusion went together with high status, not against it - to some extent, this is also true of males in some Islamic contexts). The veil, however, probably did not exist in its modern form either in pre-Islamic or early Islamic times (not, at least, as a generalized use).
6- The basic contention that Islam improved the lot of women is likely to be true at least in some respects - but the hints in sources suggest that at least in parts of the Arabian peninsula, women had already some degree of autonomy and could access power and public prominence.
I wish I knew better about the South Arabian epigraphic material - I can say that references to female traders and priestess exist there.