Origin of gendered words

One could assume that the words female and woman originate by combination of the masculine counterpart with an added prefix, some people specifically think that woman is the combination of womb + man. This is not the case.
At one point in time in old English the words for man and woman were wer and wif, words such as werewolf, wife or midwife originate from these words. The word man meant person. Many words such as mankind and man-made were originally entirely gender neutral. The word wifman meant "female-person" and over time evolved into modern woman.
The word human is also not hu + man, instead it is related to the word homo which was again gender neutral.
The word female comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning "woman". In middle english the correct spelling was femelle before it evolved into female, the English spelling and pronunciation were remodeled under the influence of male, which is otherwise not etymologically related.
== Implications of these misconceptions ==
Feminists like to use the incorrect etymology of the aforementioned words to tell narratives about the world, which discredits their argument. On the other hand the fact that the word meant for all people became the word just for the male gender still tells us a lot about society and bolsters the feminist argument. This phenomenon shows up in multiple Germanic and Romance languages, for example in Spanish the gender neutral homo (meaning person) evolved into hombre (meaning man).
The fact that man used to gender neutral doesn't mean that words such as fireman or businessman are gender neutral as well. What meaning once was has no impact on what meaning it has now, all languages evolve. It is undeniable that these words have masculine connotations.
== More facts ==
Proto-Germanic word wiban is the farthest we can trace the origin of the word woman with certainty. But it has been theorized to come from several (theorized) Proto-Indo-European words, the two most common theories being that it came from a word meaning "female genitalia" and that it came from an early word for "shame".
The theory of where the word femella comes from suggests the Proto-Indo-European word for "to suck", probably as a reference to breastfeeding and not the other thing you are thinking about.