This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. I could care less about women versus female. Woman is singular. “A guy named Joe came to see you while you were out.” vs “A gentleman named Joe came to see you while you were out.” The difference: Joe the guy is white, Joe the gentleman is black. For those of us who give a damn, “women” or “woman” should never be used as an adjective. The word woman describes a human female. We are scared, incompetent, and powerless, particularly around women. Subscribers get access to our archives with 800+ interactive exercises! Different words set us off. b. Since I think others often have that same knee-jerk thought response, I sometimes find myself qualifying my words with the standard “male secretary” or “female doctor,” which are phrases I find repulsive, really, smacking somehow of judgment, as if there is something wrong or unusual about a man being a secretary or a woman being a doctor. It’s a spectrum. We’re told that those who are assigned male at birth are men and those who are assigned female at birth are women. Woman is singular. It just highlights how crass it is. Even though male Senators are still just men in their personal lives. BeeDictionary.com is an Online American English Dictionary with intuitive browsing interface. I agree with you that the distinction should be preserved in writing. (In fact, I just read your query to my husband, who has had to listen to me complain about this quite a bit, and exclaimed, “Finally!”) Every time I hear this voiced on television, my ear catches it and my brain rejects it. The plural women is sometimes used for female humans regardless of age, as in phrases such as "women's rights." * It is a privilege to be able to choose your words carelessly, have them cause harm or alienation to others, and get away with it without repercussions. Would you want someone at your business saying “Yo, dis job is phat! So when you tell someone you spoke to the secretary, their first response might be, “Oh, what did SHE say?” but if you tell someone you went to the doctor, they would ask, “What did HE tell you?” I am “middle-aged” (51) and still tend to have that knee-jerk thought response, much as I try to get rid of it. Although hormone replacement therapy is an option for trans and gender non-conforming people, a trans man who isn’t on hormones, for example, isn’t any less male than one who is. The medical use of female as opposed to girl, lady, or woman is likely meant to be more inclusive and less culturally defined. It wasn’t until I realized that I was transgender that I was able to separate my gender from my sexual orientation. For as long as I can remember, I've been immediately skeptical of men who use the word "female" to describe women. A note in the OED about the use of female as a mere synonym for “woman,” gives some support to what otherwise might be seen as an isolated idiosyncrasy: The simple use [of “female”] is now commonly avoided by good writers, exc. Everything you need to know about and expect during, the most important election of our lifetimes, 6 Reasons You Should Stop Referring To Women As 'Females' Right Now.