Why is 做 in the sentence 不知道大家觉得做女人最大的悲哀是什么？ From a MandarinCorner.org video I Hate Getting My Period (audio and transcript link; video is also searchable on YouTube), we have the following sentence:


Bù zhīdào dàjiā juédé zuò nǚrén zuìdà de bēi'āi shì shénme?
不知道大家觉得做女人最大的悲哀是什么？
I don't know what you think is the difficult thing about being a woman?

I'm confused as to why 做 is in this sentence; it seems to serve some kind of grammatical function I'm not aware of.  It looks like it could be omitted without problem.  I also feel a bit of a mismatch between both 做 and 是 in the sentence.
Question: Why is 做 in the sentence 不知道大家觉得做女人最大的悲哀是什么？
Looking up 做 using the PeraPera Chinese Popup Dictionary:


to do; to make; to produce; to write; to compose; to act as; to engage in; to hold (a party); to be; to become; to function (in some capacity); to serve as; to be used for; to form (a bond or relationship); to pretend; to feign; to act a part; to put on appearance

Among many definitions, there's &quot;to be&quot;, &quot;to act as&quot;, and &quot;to produce&quot; on the list, which seem closest in meaning.  The 做 in the given sentence functions something like &quot;is&quot; (approximately &quot;is the greatest annoyance&quot;), which is typically performed by 是 (and this also occurs in the sentence).  However, we obviously can't just interchange 是 and 做 throughout Chinese.
I'm more familiar with using 做 to form a verb (e.g. 做饭 &quot;cook food&quot; and 做工业 &quot;do homework&quot;) rather than in this case 做悲哀 which seems along the lines of &quot;give rise to annoyance&quot;.
做 here is a verb, according to Oxford, meaning:


  5 充当 be


they give three examples:


  做个好孩子 
  be a good child 
  
  做老实人 
  be an honest person 
  
  做秘书 
  be a secretary 


Pleco's PLC dictionary also has this verbal meaning:


  4 be; become
  
  做演员 
  zuò yǎnyuán
  become an actor or actress; go on the stage 
  
  后来她做保育员了。 
  Hòulái tā zuò bǎoyùyuán le.
  Later she became a child-care worker. 
  
  今天开会由你做主席。 
  Jīntiān kāihuì yóu nǐ zuò zhǔxí.
  You’ll be the chairman at today’s meeting. 




做女人 means, as the subtitles correctly translated above, to be a woman.