"Certainly pictures of women in glasses are rare." That mightn't mean they didn't wear glasses at other times. It's still pretty common for young people of both sexes to take their glasses off for a photo, and to try to avoid them in other settings too.

I think there was also an idea around at one time that if you gave children glasses early on you'd make their eyesight worse, and turn a temporary stage into a lifelong condition. A bit the way that it's now thought by some people that orthodontic work on growing children can distort the final result more than leaving thigs to sort themsleves out. Whether either of these suggestions is actually true I have no idea.