Is "woman" really interchangable with "female" as an adjective?

I listen to BBC Radio 4 a fair bit. They pretty much always use "woman" as opposed to "female" - like "a woman pilot".

To me this just sounds completely wrong, and most stuff I can find online about it seems to agree with me.

My first thought was that there might be a gender equality reason for saying "woman" (Radio 4 is fairly good about promoting gender equality), but if there is one, I can't find it. I found another question that almost suggests the opposite - that "woman driver" is a derogative term.

What do all y'all think? Do Radio 4 have a reason for this or are they just being sloppy?

Solution 1:

The only reason I can think of always using woman instead of female is to specifically imply that the person or persons being referred to are adult females. Female has no implication of age whereas Woman does. Technically, the use of woman in place of female (in cases such as you point out) is acceptable and is proper english; however I believe many native speakers would agree that it comes across as awkward. It's a rather atypical use of the word.

That having been said, if it were me, I'd use male/female unless I felt it was necessary to indicate age. In such a case I would also specify adult such as "an adult female pilot". However, I would think that when discussing pilots and drivers it is safe to assume the person is adult and as such, you would only need to specify that the person was NOT an adult if necessary.