That's kind of the opposite. You're talking about using "female" as a noun instead of an adjective. And for sure, don't do that to refer to humans! But it's perfectly normal and correct as an adjective.

Yes, that is if you turn "female" into a noun, which does sound weird and dehumanizing, but using "women" as an adjective just sounds incorrect. Maybe people do that because they try to avoid saying "female" at all costs to avoid being accused of misogyny or dehumanization.

I recognize that "female" is sometimes taken this way now, but I seem to remember a time when it was the use of "woman" as an adjective that seemed more problematic. I grew up watching TV reruns from the 50s & 60s, and in shows from that era, you'd hear characters intended to be seen as sexist railing about "women drivers", "women reporters", etc. To my (admittedly young) ear, part of the insult or intended derision in these terms came from the intentional clunkiness of the terms. As no one would say "man driver" or "man reporter", it made the phrase "woman driver" seem unnatural, and by extension then the idea of a woman driver unnatural. If the characters had used the more clinical sounding "female driver", it would likely only come off as equivalent to "male driver", and so lose much of its punch.

I realize that there is now some ick associated with some uses of the word female, but if efforts aren't made to reclaim it, I think we are doomed to it becoming strictly pejorative - and who wants that?

In my writing, if I'm going to refer to someone as "female" it's usually because I'm also going to refer to someone else as "male" in that same context.

This new trend is kind of annoying because I wrote a book about sapient magical sugar gliders and since they're not humans, I referred to them as "male" and "female". That made the writing feel way too parochial and, well, awful so I came up with special words for male and female children and adults for the species instead.

Young females were called "kaydees" and the males were "keedos". The species as a whole was named "kads".

I actually had a reader say it was "a bad smell" that I used the word "female" too often (they did a search for that but not "male", sigh).