I'm not English native speaker, why is it abuse? There is also book "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II" that uses the same term.
In English you can very often use a noun to qualify another noun (like in "house brick"), but it's rare for "A B" to mean "B which is an A" (more often it's something like "B for an A" or "B concerning an A").
The form "Woman X" is relatively recent (it's appearing because using "female" for humans is becoming mildly taboo), so it seems odd to someone who isn't used to it.
In English you can very often use a noun to qualify another noun (like in "house brick"), but it's rare for "A B" to mean "B which is an A" (more often it's something like "B for an A" or "B concerning an A").
The form "Woman X" is relatively recent (it's appearing because using "female" for humans is becoming mildly taboo), so it seems odd to someone who isn't used to it.