Why is maya described as being a woman?

Satnaam ji,   Dandauth bandhna ji,   

it's true in the male dominated major religions (groupings) the woman has always been seen as the one who tempts the religious men to make mistakes and sin.  Even in Sikhism now women are not allowed to sing kirtan at golden temple. Women are not allowed to be in punj pyare.  Some groups don't even let women read from gurbani guru when they do long readings.     Hindu gurus and sikh sants also do not like to have women in their close inner circle, just young men. And how many sikh priests in gurdwara have you seen that are women?  None for me.

And ironically the male singers at golden temple sing every morning the prayer of dhan dhan baba nanak ji has praising how important women are "so why call her bad, even Kings are born from her!"

But in spiritual terms, not gender terms, God is the pure divine loving energy (can say male) , he created another energy maya (can say female).  From their union, more energies were created, shiva, brahma, vishnu to destroy, create and sustain the creation.   So dhan dhan dassan dass ji explained in japji the line, Eka maee, jugat viaaee, tin Chele parvaan.

Baba ji said these energies run the creation.  These are the powers that meditators tapped into to manipulate nature. Ridhi sidhis... Super natural powers.

Now baba ji said God is letting scientists into these powers as well.

So baba ji said these energies run the whole creation,  we call them maya,  brahma shiva vishnu,     they also run our mind.   Mind has three dimensions, rajo, sato, tamo, these are brahma, vishnu, shiva energies,  and together are the three parts of maya.

So when you go on your spiritual journey inside back to the creator (husband, khasam)  as a bride (suhagan). Then we have to defeat all these energies running our mind. So bhagats see these energies as images in visions or dreams.  So some sangat here have seen brahma, shiva, vishnu, as males.   We have seen maya as a super model many times tempting us,  other times she has looked like an dark evil looking witch.    We have seen it and it is written in gurbani too, that is how maya energy appears.    For ladies in the sangat maya can appear as a beautiful male model trying to tempt them... Kaam dev.

So in this example, kaam/lust, wether in a man or woman is called as part of maya. It's not that a woman is bad or maya is seen as a woman to put women down.   It's the negative energy that can take the form of a man or woman in our visions/dreams to tempt us with desire.

Satnaam Satnaam Satnaam ji we hope that makes sense.