"woman" or "women" as a stand-in for the adjective "female"? [closed]

As in,

Emily Dickinson was a great woman poet

or

Emily Dickinson was a great women poet

in order to mean

Emily Dickinson was a great female poet

Think I may have seen this adjectival usage of "women/woman" in a feminist art criticism paper, wondering if there's an accepted spelling...

Solution 1:

If you must specify the sex of Emily Dickinson, I'd suggest that you switch the order of words

A great woman poet was Emily Dickinson
One of the greatest women poets was Emily Dickinson

Note that woman poet is singular, whereas women poets is plural.

You could replace woman poet with poetess but as Wiktionary points out

'Poetess' is rare in contemporary usage according to which both sexes are known normally as 'poets'.

Consequently, placing the noun woman or women in front of occupations that are (or were) typically associated with men may be considered sexist or politically incorrect, but consider the following professions:

• woman prison officer (859 results Google books)
• woman truck driver (1,960)
• woman scientist (16,800)

Despite this usage, if I had to introduce a friend called Emily I would never say:
"This is Emily, she's a woman scientist." But simply "This is Emily, she's a scientist".