The dichotomy of the artist and lover

This dichotomizing of the two aspects of female energy, caretaking versus generative action, has been the dominant impact of the cultural narrative about love. We have thought of ourselves either as ... lover or artist—but rarely both. Rarely do assume that the same process involved in creating must inform our loving, or that in loving we create. Rarely would we assume the agency to create, because to have agency means the quality of moving or exerting power, the state of being in action, and as women this has not been our common sense of ourselves.

--Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan, Singing at the Top of Our Lungs: Women, Love, and Creativity, p. 25.

What about the ovarian idea?

The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman's ancestral experiences of man — and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being, not in the sense of masculine creativity, but in the sense that he brings forth something we might call the the spermatic word. Just as a man brings forth his work as a complete creation out of his inner feminine nature, so the inner masculine side of a woman brings forth creative seeds which have the power to fertilize the feminine side of the man.

-- Carl G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 209.

Maybe they just needed to get their hair out of their eyes

It seems that women have made few contributions to the discoveries and inventions in the history of civilization; there is, however, one technique which they may have invented—that of plaiting and weaving. If that is so, we should be tempted to guess the unconscious motive for the achievement.

--Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 164.