There was an earlier thread about Helen Creighton and how she collected songs in Nova Scotia. One of the points raised was the difficulty of collecting bawdy songs. They tend to get passed down and along in the same gender, most people don't start conversations with complete strangers by telling a dirty joke, at least there is one taxi driver I know of and a few comedians...So I suspect that you may get a more representative view of what women were singing if you check out collections gathered by women. Any woman in the past who wanted to create a song and pass it on could probably do so if it was not too wildly unconventional and she had children, other family or neighbours who would listen and learn. Simply because there was a societal bias against women trying to live by artistic endeavour did not mean that ALL husbands, fathers, brothers and sons would not listen and enjoy.