[dragonwriter]

> Fully grown women also refer to their female coworkers largely as "girls".

Sometimes, some of them do. Context matters, still, and one place where this is very rare -- for the same reason that it is very common for women to object when other people do this -- is in discussions of professional performance. And, in another sense in which context matters, what might be unoffensive -- or only mildly so -- on its own can be more offensive when it is compounding an already-sexist set of statements.

> Guys do not refer to men as "boys".

IME, sometimes they do. (It may not be particularly common in the dominant -- i.e., white middle-class -- subculture, but there certainly are subcultures in which, e.g., referring to an adult male's adult male associates as his "boys" is not uncommon. And it would still be compound the offense to use the same term for adult male members of that subculture when making an otherwise-racist set of statements.)

> Feel free to suggest an alternative to "gals"

In the context of the statement Hunt was making, the obvious choice that would not compound the already sexist nature of his remarks to refer to adult female humans would be "women".