Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pertaining only to women or gay men.

1787		Adventures of Jonathan Corncob 122: My friend told me, that as I did not seem to like any of his hen negroes, he had sent to a planter [...] to borrow a beauty of a somewhat lighter hue.
1867		G.W. Harris ‘What Bob Dawson Said...’ Chattanooga Daily Amer. Union 28 Nov. in Inge (1967) 177: The hen tailors [tailors of women’s clothing] [...] have invented a substitute.
1868		Bristol Times & Mirror 20 Apr. n.p.: The Pall Mall bursts into chivalrous defence of [...] slang in petticoats. ‘Awfully,’ [...] is a schoolgirl’s idiom [...] It is a hen word.
1896		W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 7: hen-medic. n. female student in the medical department.
1902		Okolona Messenger (MS) 22 Oct. 3/1: College slang [...] ‘swipe’, ‘soak’, ‘hen-medic’, ‘goose-egg’, ‘crib’.
1945		C. Himes ‘The Song Says “Keep on Smiling”’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 87: Why, it’s just a hen affair, nobody but just the women.
1949		J.H. Burns Lucifer with a Book 88: The ladies [...] wanted to sit by themselves and have a good hen talk about their chintzes and their children.
2016		Oxford Student 20 May 32/1: A hen do. A sacred institution.