I hope that you can extend some grace to people born in different eras. When I hear something like “woman employee,” I hear my Greatest Generation grandparents, and believe me, neither “woman doctor” or “woman driver,” nor any similar construction was complimentary.

I think it was the Boomers who started to use “female” as an adjective, because it sounded clinical, descriptive, and non-judgemental. So “female employee” sounds much better to my ear. (But, FWIW, the use of “female” as a noun is total cringe.)

Yeah, inceldom has coopted the word, and now I hear that “woman doctor” is preferred, but it’s not always easy to remember that on the fly when you grew up with the opposite connotation.