No Stupid Questions

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"?

The English language is unusual in that it doesn't have gendered nouns, so we find other, often quite clumsy, ways to indicate it. You're right that it doesn't make sense grammatically; we say it that way simply because it scans better.

As a side note, I've also literally never seen anyone say "men artists" or "men writers". What gives?

Patriarchy. Society defaults to the male. That's not unique to the English-speaking world, of course.

I never saw anybody using women artists, women writers etc

To add on, I've found that referring to women as "females" in anything other than formal or scientific contexts has adopted something of a sour taste in recent years. The practice is often associated with incel/misogynistic behavior and ideology, probably because it implicitly strips women of their personhood and reduces them to their sex. Put another way, both a female dog and a female human could be called a "female", but only one could be called a "woman".

That's my own two cents though, take them with a grain of salt.

Lots to unpack here.

First: female/male vs women/men. Female/male is usually used in clinical settings and for animals. Using female/male is implicitly dehumanizing. And I think this is a common trait of most romance languages: macho and hembra, for instance, are used primarily for animals in Spanish. Tell us your language and I'm guessing someone can explain it in your language.

Second: Nouns can function as adjectives: race horse, history teacher, ticket office. I think "woman writer" also implies that the writer is writing for a female audience.

Third: "Female artist" is actually OK in my book because it's used an an ADJECTIVE and the really offensive use is "females" as a noun. "Do you see those females over there by the bar?" But I think it can be a case of overcorrection to avoid "female" as adjective.

There's a funny one that I heard: "lady senator." So dainty and refined.

Fourth: MALE is the default in patriarchal societies. If you refer to someone without specifying gender, the assumption is that they're male (and let's face it: probably also white).

I always think the best solution is to start using feminine nouns more, like writress.

woman/women/men/man are both adjectives and nouns. english is fucked because it's a bunch of different grammars that all jumped another language in alley and then made a new language by wearing that language as a skinsuit, and then conquered most of the world.

we don't refer to "men artists" or "men writers" because the hegemonic standard within our society is the masculine perspective. so we sometimes have to draw attention to "this artist is showing you a woman's perspective" to draw attention to that the arts and culture that you see by default show an incomplete view of the world. i look forward to the day the feminine perspective is common enough that we either just call everyone artists or have to start differentiating perspectives to ensure we fully understand the ramifications of what we're seeing

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.

Misogyny

As a side note, I’ve also literally never seen anyone say “men artists” or “men writers”. What gives?

Sexism. It's "normal" for a male to do it and exceptional for a female.

It's bullshit.

That being said context is key, it could be fine depending on what it is in and about.

Not all women are biologically female

A woman isn't necessarily female.