Women do not generally tinker with stuff, or indeed have hobbies. There are some female pursuits equivalent to model shipwrighting, like embroidery or furnishing really elaborate dolls' houses (that one I do completely get). You don't often find female collectors of anything though, and when you do, they tend to collect stuff not as an end in itself but because whatever it is has some actual utility as homeware or gardenware. So you do get female collectors of ceramics, garden gnomes, and what not. A bloke interested in gardening would express it by having a collection of 25 vintage lawnmowers, or would try to amass 2,000 different types of rose, or something. Roses aren't a great example, because collecting rose varieties was invented by the Empress Josephine no less, but collecting for collecting's sake is not really a female behaviour.
If women did build models, I could see them taking up ship building if only because model ships, especially tall ships made of wood, are acceptable household ornaments provided you don't have twenty of them, they don't have any ugly associations and you are prepared to dust them. My Cutty Sark bought in Mauritius in 1993 is allowed a prominent position in the house, but I don't think the Nazi battleship Bismarck would be tolerated for domestic display. However, most men who build models are in effect continuing a childhood hobby into adulthood, which is why we're a bit sheepish about it. Dolls' houses aside, the XX half of the population doesn't really do this.
