Are women supposed to be artists?

hello all of my faithful readers-the question posed, a curious question, but unfortunately still a valid one as we rumble through the 21st century, still unsure of the "place" of women in the artworld. this question came to me at the philadelphia museum which my daughter and i visited on saturday, in search of enlightenment, a little culture, and respite from an unseasonbly warm september day.we viewed the newly gorgeously restored painting of the gross clinic by charles eakins. on the side of the exhibit was a portrait of the artist painted by the artist's wife (whose name god forgive me i didn't note down).it was a fab painting, skillfully executed with a warm and beautiful palette, and it seemed both of its time and at the same time very modern,and it was to my mind more interesting than the "masterpiece" by her husband.on the opposite wall. it just made me want to sit down and have a chat with him in front of a fireplace over tea-he looked very approachable and a little bit like an actor we'd seen around(neither of us could remember who). the most interesting thing though was the blurb about the artist, who had been a student at the pennsylvania academy of fine art, had won all kinds of prestigious awards and then bang, married eakins and put her brushes away until after his death some considerable years later. the blurb gave no reason for this decision, and made no comments about it, but it brought to mind how often this seems to happen, or seemed to happen as if, and it may not be the case at all, there's only room for one artist in the family, and that one artist,more often tan not, seems to be THE MAN. is my thinking skewed or is there really something in this , and by golly is it still happening today in the year 2010? of course one thing leads to another and we are forced to admit that if we see a painting in a museum by a woman we are still surprised(Morisot and Cassatt anyone among all those men), any painting by a woman in any context surrounded by all of those men. i am sure there are far more women represented by galleries, and acquired by both museums and art collectors,but c'mon- don't we still say "and it was by a woman", with that tone of surprise in our voices? i know i do and i consider myself both a woman, and an artist, and i hope that for my daughter's generation that surprise will be less, and that maybe someday, we'll all just be considered artists without any reference to gender(or race or sexual orientation but that's another whole ball of wax). i think there's room enough out there for all of us, and if this seems just too obvious and too done to death, i'm sorry, but this is where i'm at. what do you think? cheers, brigid.