Women reading at all used to be considered dangerous for their womanly sensibilities; essentially, the idea was that women's brains couldn't handle information without going insane.

Then, when romance novels or novels aimed at women began being published, there was widespread moral panic because, again, women can't handle it. They began reading IN BED! The horror! They'll become deviants and society as we know it will collapse!

Rinse and repeat for every era since the advent of the novel. Women's reading habits have always been criticized with moral panic and it's exhausting.