"Female" is an adjective and "women" is a noun. In English you can very often use a noun to qualify another noun (like in "house brick"), but it's rare for "A

"Female" is an adjective and "women" is a noun. In English you can very often use a noun to qualify another noun (like in "house brick"), but it's rare for "A B" to mean "B which is an A" (more often it's something like "B for an A" or "B concerning an A"). The form "Woman X" is relatively recent (it's appearing because using "female" for humans is becoming mildly taboo), so it seems odd to someone who isn't used to it.