It’s an evolving identity. If you think about what women have been mostly doing just in America, it’s been fighting to get legal voting rights, and then fighting to get out of the house and into the workplace, and then fighting to legally get rights for contraception and abortions, and then fighting gender discrimination and harassment (and this is just in the last 120 years). This is their identity at the moment, and I try to be patient with that fact.
If all you’ve been doing is fighting for your damn life as a group, then this will define your character until new types of challenges balance out your origins. This is true for a lot of groups that have consistent struggle. I cannot fault them for being combative.