I’m not a native English speaker, so forgive my ignorance, but isn’t “women” a noun, not an adjective? Why not just say “female artists” or “female writers”?
As a side note, I’ve also literally never seen anyone say “men artists” or “men writers”. What gives?
But you do probably hear things like male nurse or male nanny. (For this comment I’m ignoring the difference between male/female and man/woman, others have already tackled that.) It’s pretty obvious what’s going on, isn’t it? For those professions, people normally imagine them in one gender by default unless other clues are given. You can argue all day about whether it’s right or wrong or justified or whatever, but in any case, it’s true. And if it’s important for the speaker that the listener knows from the start what to imagine, then they add the explicit gender.
Not related to the answer but your post reminds me of a dark joke: it’s not true that there’s a pay gap between men and women. It’s just that men tend to choose higher paying jobs like doctor, lawyer, pilot, while women choose lower paying jobs like female doctor, female lawyer, female pilot.