Yes on the first one, maybe on the second. It's implied women can learn the art magic just as men do and it's all just men wanting/believing in their no girls allowed club, but from my read on it, it's implied by some characters that it's somewhat different and deeper. Good ass quote from an old hag:

A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who'll ask the dark its name?”

It doesn't outright say which is true so I guess you're supposed to apply your own feminist values on it.