Muzzle-loaders of the 18th-19th c. are muzzle-heavy, and if the buttstocks are long enough to fit a typical man's arms, they are too long for the average woman. Most women today find the modern reproductions of these very awkward to hold and aim. What about surviving guns from the period? The survival rate for American guns , rifles from the 18th c., is rather low: they mostly got worn out. However , later ones, muzzle-loaders circa 1820-1860 had only a few decades of use before they were made obsolete by breech-loading cartridge guns, and a good number of those do survive. Among them are indeed found some lighter pieces with shorter buttstocks. These have sometimes been called boy's rifles, but given the fact that a rifle was not cheap and that a boy would soon grow too big to use a small one, it's most likely that they were made for women, and now they're usually called ladies' rifles. I doubt anyone has ever done some sort of survey to come up with a percentage, to say if the average woman would own one, but it's pretty safe to say that the average surviving period rifle is more often sized to fit an average man. This is different from saying whether the average woman on the frontier c. 1820-1860 would be ABLE to load and shoot a gun if required, of course- but if she was average-sized, she'd be looking for something to rest it on.

Looking around online for an example of a ladies' rifle, I have only found this . If you scroll far down to Fig 69, the Cofer rifle is a good- though overly fancy- example.