[Freud] saw women as ultimately restricted by their biology. It led him to focus on inherent limitations in women. He saw their role in childbearing which demanded so much time and attention, [and] he saw women’s sexual development as an aborted development based on discovering that they didn’t have penises, and therefore that they were thrown off course for the rest of life.
His understanding of women was notoriously inadequate, but he did make great steps beyond what was understood about women when he came on the scene. It was very unusual in Freud’s time even to acknowledge that women had sexual desire, much less to say that the repression of their sexual desire could make them hysterical.