As mentioned there were six women in NASA's 1978 astronaut class. In addition to Sally Ride the other women were Judy Resnik, Margaret Seddon, Shannon Lucid, Kathy Sullivan and Anna Fisher. At the time they were chosen Ride was finishing her physics PhD at Stanford, Resnik was working in industry with a PhD in electrical engineering, Seddon was a physician who was training in surgery, Lucid was a biochemistry researcher, Sullivan had just finished a PhD in Geology and Fisher was an emergency medicine physician.
Two sources I can come up with that address what their lives were like are Riding Rockets by fellow 1978 astronaut Richard Mullane and Sally Ride's NASA Oral History Project interviews. Riding Rockets is not what you'd call a serious history book, but it does offer one of the most frank and honest accounts of what life as a shuttle astronaut was like.
According to both Ride and Mullane the early women astronauts didn't face too many issues in their day to day work. Things weren't perfect and Mullane was quite frank about the fact that most of the military astronaut candidates at the time simply hadn't worked with women in any sort of professional capacity before. A couple of things helped ameliorate that though. All of the astronaut candidates were extremely intelligent, hard-working over-achievers so even the most old-fashioned military types quickly developed a lot of respect for the women they worked with. Also, astronaut training is intense. Going through that kind of an experience as a group tends to bring people together.
Another thing Mullane mentioned in his book was that the "cultural gap" (for lack of a better term) between the women and the men was far less significant than the gap between the the military and civilian astronauts. The military flyers who were chosen by NASA in 1978 were nearly all Vietnam veterans who's spent their entire adult lives in the service. The male and female civilian astronauts by contrast had spent most of their professional lives in academia (all of the civilian astronauts had PhDs or MDs, or both) and at one point in his book Mullane mentions that he kind of shook his head at the idea of a post-doc who'd spent his entire adult life being in school.
None of this means that gender differences were non-existent. Mullane was quite honest about the fact that the women astronauts had to put up with more politically-incorrect/sexist humor than they would have to nowadays. Also, after the 1978 astronaut class was chosen the women got a lot more publicity than the men. This can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It sounds like most of the astronaut candidates weren't particularly interested in talking to reporters or having to do PR work, so the women had it worse in that regard. In her oral history interview Ride said that NASA did a pretty good job of shielding her from publicity while she was training for STS-7 (her first flight) but after the flight was over she was definitely paraded around more than most astronauts. That kind of thing mostly dropped off after Sally Ride flew though. How many people remember Judy Resnik as the second woman in space?
On a somewhat humorous note, both Mullane and Ride had stories about how clueless some NASA engineers were about women's health. When Ride was preparing to fly someone at NASA who was preparing the medical & personal care items asked how many tampons they should pack and if a hundred would be enough for a one week flight? She assured them that would be massive overkill. Mullane's book also mentions Judy Resnik having a similar experience. When she first saw how many tampons they were planning on supplying she laughed and said any woman who used that many in a week would be dead from blood loss.
If you're interested in learning more about this all of the women from the 1978 astronaut class except for Judy Resnik have done interviews that you can read for free on NASA's oral history site. A number of women from the 1980 class have interviews on there as well.