Gender disparity in use of terms for children (女の子, 男の子) for adults


According to a paper I read some time ago for a class, words such as 女の子、女子
etc. are sometimes used for adults, where the coordinate male terms would
generally not be used. Do we have some evidence for this? I'm not disinclined
to believe the statement, since it fits with the literature on Language and
Gender generally, but the paper didn't cite anything for this claim, so I
don't feel comfortable just claiming this, without support.




男子 and 女子 are tricky words, but they are safely used for adults in certain
situations. Please read this first: [What are the differences between 女子{じょし},
娘子{じょうし} and 女{おんな}の子{こ}?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/57674/5010)

Now, 女子 and 女の子 are relatively more common than 男子/男の子 when topics like
fashion or romance are concerned. I think this is simply because these words
tend to have a _kawaii_ impression when they refer to adults. Still, it is not
uncommon for a woman to refer to younger male adult they find cute as 男の子 (I
think English speakers also use _boy_ for similar situations).
[草食男子](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore_men) was a very common
buzzword, too.

I don't know an academic research on the frequency, but the popularity of
女子/男子 to refer to adults is a trend recognized by many native speakers in the
last few decades, as described in the linked answer above. There have been
many buzzwords around this.

