Some women are secure enough that it bounces off when stupid people act stupid. Some are making meta-jokes about sexism and how backward comments like that are. Some are comfortable with the prototypical 50s-style gender roles that you abhor.

To know "what the best sort of the response would be," you'd have to know a lot about the person you're talking to and how they'll respond to your unsolicited advice, and no one on HN is going to be able to grant you that.

But then, I'm not too sympathetic to what strikes me as an arrogant desire to transform the primitive worldview of a thinking adult with your wet blanket nostrums. By all means intervene if someone's being demeaning to another person, but in the case of a woman making a kitchen joke, I doubt you're dealing with a neanderthal waiting to be shaken into the 21st century by sobering thoughts about how retrograde it is to even joke about such things.

Emotional fragility has got to be at an all-time high these days.