Women's love of Pinterest has been one of the major story lines around the social media upstart. A new survey has uncovered some striking numbers to back that story up. A new report from Pew says that one-fifth of all women in the U.S. who go online belong to Pinterest, using the site to post photos of everything from wedding ideas and dessert recipes to vacation locales and sports cars. That news might sound great for Pinterest, except that the company still hasn't pinned down a way to turn that love into money.

As the image-based social network has taken off over the last year, Pinterest has become strongly identified with females. But the report just released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project advances the story another step, revealing that one in five women who use the internet is using Pinterest.

Pew surveyed 1,005 adults 18 and older who use the internet regularly and found that 12 percent have a Pinterest account and use it. Of women that use the internet, 19 percent said they use Pinterest. Interestingly, the same percentage of adults (12 percent) also reported they use Instagram, the photo-sharing app acquired by Facebook earlier this year.

Pew divided survey respondents into creators — people who upload original videos or photos they shot themselves — and curators, those who republish photos and videos they find online. Whether they are posting videos or photos on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, or Tumblr, 46 percent of adults said they were creators. Given that 66 percent of internet-savvy adults use Facebook, it's not shocking that more of their own pictures make it online. Not far behind, 41 percent of respondents said they were curators. It's not hard to imagine that many of them are reposting images they find on Pinterest.

Despite the fact that Pinterest has an estimated 23 million users, the company isn't making money off of any of them — or at least they haven't talked about it. Pinterest could be helping other businesses make some revenue: the social network refers more traffic than Twitter or Yahoo to outside websites, but it's not capturing any money before those users leave.

Pinterest shocked everyone when it raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation in May 2012, leading venture capitalists and the media to hint at the possibility of another bubble set to burst. So far, the social network hasn't produced a money-making business model to convince the naysayers that its more than a pretty website, or that it's even remotely worth such a staggering amount. The site also has its fair share of problems with spammers and legal threats over alleged copyright infringement.

Growing audience of women or not, Pinterest only has so much time to cash in before it can no longer sustain itself. Unless it can figure out how to monetize that loyal audience, love alone won't save the day.