Is Shounen a justification to give female characters poor treatment?

Whenever people in a forum complain that female characters in certain manga/anime are treated poorly they’ll always be met with “It’s Shounen. Targeted toward men y’know” kind of answer that reeks of justification. It’s a common sight in Shounen that women are always the weakest among their male peers, repeated maiden-in-distress materials, and worse of all, work as eye candy for the sake of fan services. All this repeated occurences and tendencies scream sexism to me. I am not saying all Shounen are like that but most of them are.

What I don’t understand is that why are they doing that? Do the writers have strong conviction that male readers/audiences feel pleased by showing them the images that men are more superior than women? Would it damage men’s ego if women are shown to be just as competent as men? Have they not noticed the gender-equality movement and its impact to readers of both gender? Why won’t they bring a wind of change?