Just posted on the F1 thread and realised how much my husband has changed in 10 years.
For a long time I have been the main earner, we share all tasks equally and I never witnessed any belittling of women by him. Until one day when he was helping a family member with a presentation and asked me to look it over.
Completely unrelated to the subject of the presentation was a picture of a scantily clad attractive woman. I questioned this and said "is this appropriate" He then contacted the man who created the presentation and said "Is this appropriate" After a while the man came back and said "It's OK, I've checked and the only team members who I'm presenting to are men, there's no women there"
DH says "OK" I go ballistic and then calm down enough to say, "Would it be OK to have a buff young chap in tight shorts in the presentation?" He was like
"No, that would just be silly"
A few months after that he called out his BIL for making some crude comment about a page 3 girl and said "Thats my Sister you're sitting next to, on what planet do you think that's OK?"
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and he came home from work and mentioned that he had asked for some POS from a rep, an outdoorsy type product and had been given posters showing young women with their back to the camera in micro shorts. He said "I put them straight in the bin, it's not fucking relevant to the product and it's lazy shit marketing and insulting to our customers"
By Jove I think he's got it! Not that he was ever deeply misogynistic, it's just that he's never questioned the background stuff before, and now he seems to see it everywhere.
I think that's a lot of the problem now, yes we have some deeply dyed in the wool women haters but far more men that fall into the "Generally nice guy that respects women but can't see what all the fuss is about re grid girls/banter/sexy woman advertising plumbing supplies etc etc"
Don't know what the answer is, suspect with DH it just took me pointing things out and giving reverse examples for him to see that this stuff goes on with no logical reason other than "Men do - women decorate"