Originally Posted by Squishor

Even in the small office where I work, I notice my boss refers to the women in the front office as "girls" but he refers to me as "my assistant" or "my associate." It shouldn't come as any surprise that he has more respect for my capabilities. I think that's what we're trying to point out here - I don't think he's consciously putting them down every time he calls them girls but there's an attitude at the root of the words he chooses. "Girl" was a common way to refer to grown women before the whole feminist thing happened, and a lot of women had to work very hard to open people's eyes to the ingrained double standards in our world. That the 20-somethings of today just shrug it off as irrelevent kind of rubs salt in the wound (nothing personal to anyone here). Because if anyone thinks that they are regarded as highly as someone who gets acknowledged as a grown-up, think again. You are being diminutized and you'd better stay cute or else you might find there are a whole lot of people who won't like you as much anymore. There is still a wage gap between men and women, a real-life indicator of the underlying attitudes I'm talking about. Here are some quick statistics:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763170.html