Women Surrealists?

I've always had a fascination in the Surrealist movement. What was their real agenda? How could they claim to be accessing the subconscious spontaneously, when they were clearly trying to access the subconscious?

But what I find really odd are the handful of women artists working within a movement that was so clearly misogynist. One of the main Surrealist ambitions was for men to access their inner-most fantasies - which tended to result in the depiction of women as objectified, sexual beings, controlled both physically and psychologically. And they were often pretty creepy. Like Hans Bellmer's Dolls (below) or Magritte's Face (above):

So where was the space for a woman artist in this men's club?

If Surrealist paintings were all about using the female as a muse and a manifestation of their inner-psyche, what were women supposed to paint? Other women? Men? (That probably wasn't an option.) Instead, many created self-portraits. Self-portraits that adhered to the 'rules' of the movement, but perhaps had a different game in mind.

Here's an example:

This is a self-portrait of Dorothea Tanning (Max Ernst's wife). She's very much the entrapped female, breasts out, imprisoned in her prickly costume - you could easily read this from a traditional Surrealist view point, as painted by a man.

But then there's lots here to suggest a different reading. That she's presented herself as an empowered, self-assured woman, at once both entrapped, yet in control. She looks straight out at the viewer, her hand rests on a door handle, held wide open, whilst a mystical winged creature gently contacts her leg, with the option of flying away. Sure, there's much confusion and darkness here (as you'd probably imagine women felt, working within such a movement), but i think it's balanced with a sense of optimism and female strength that's a rare feature of many Surrealist works.

As Leonora Carrington (another female Surrealist) has suggested, women artists like herself "had masks on, the mask of the muse."