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Notes -
In old fashioned British English, "lady doctor" was idiomatic. It fell out of use alongside all non-fossilised uses of "lady" (we still have ladies' toilets and begin formal speeches with "Ladies and Gentlemen") around the time it became acceptable to speak in Estuary English on BBC news bulletins. My experience is that if you talk about a "woman doctor" you will be accused of sexism regardless of the words you use - she's just a doctor after all. (There is the obvious exception if you are doing feminist activism. They use people-first language and talk about "women in medicine".)
Yeah, I also just always called them "doctors", which probably added to how jarring "women doctors" sounded to me. Somehow, the latter became the "socially conscious" verbiage, though it seems counterproductive to highlight it.
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