softer sex

The politicians who joke about three acres and a cow, the writers who are comic about mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude, but you ignore their complements in the softer sex.

From Better Dead by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

With the dream of his youth vanished all predilection for the softer sex.

From The Lost Hunter A Tale of Early Times by John Turvill Adams

And, as in the case made famous by Cowper, of the "softer sex" and the old-fashioned iron-cushioned arm-chairs, the old man had, as became his years, "'gan murmur."

From The Cruise of the Betsey or, A Summer Ramble Among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides. With Rambles of a Geologist or, Ten Thousand Miles Over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland by W. S. (William Samuel) Symonds

A prince, with eunuchs and the softer sex Shut up so long, would warlike nations vex, Provoke the German, and, neglecting heaven, Forget the truce for which his oath was given.

From Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham by Sir John Denham

All, or nearly all, her acquaintances were of, I was going to say the harder, but upon my life I believe the real epithet would be the softer sex.

From The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II by Charles James Lever