This is minor but when even the bbc, who are a publicly funded TV channel in the UK constantly calls female athletes at the olympics girls, it shows how some men automatically belittle women. They don’t even realise how insulting calling full grown women ‘girl’ is.
I’ve challenged men in various jobs in the past when they have used ‘girl’ to refer to me or ‘girls’ for teams I have worked in that are mainly female. In one job I had if you listened to the senior staff, who just happened to be all men, our team must have been called ‘the girls’ the amount it was used, also the male member in our team of 4 was clearly not part of the team, so we did well constantly operating with just 75% of the required staffing levels at all times.
What really annoyed me was when a younger woman who was part of the team tried calling us all ‘girls’, she got reminded even the junior member of the team was technically an adult at 18 years old, after that she didn’t use ‘girls’ within my earshot.
I am glad to say in my experience the use of ‘girl/girls’ in the workplace seems to mainly be by men 40 plus, or if a younger male does use it my quick rebuke stays with them. Sadly though many women even those older than me are afraid to pull men up on this or have given up trying to get men younger than themselves to treat them with a basic level of respect.