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context: calligraphy > Heian period
'Feminine Hand'
When the new writing styles were devised, the angular katakana was reserved for religious and official use, and Chinese wasn't thought a proper pursuit for women, so they were left with hiragana, and used it for letters, diaries, poetry and the new form of the novel. Indeed, the world's first great novel, The Tale Of Genji, features contests to see who can write hiragana the fastest.
Hiragana was known as 'women's writing' or 'feminine hand'; but of course it should not surprise anyone that the vast majority of the noted and remembered calligraphers, from this era and the centuries to come, were male - I don't think we should take this as proving that men were actually better at it, of course.