I should make it clear that I am not defending romance as a genre. I have no horse running in that race, but I do have quite a lot invested personally in respecting women as writers and readers and people in general, and this article rubbed me the wrong way.
I would say men rate "female lowbrow fiction" lower, and women rate "male lowbrow fiction" lower.
I think the idea that fiction for men is more esteemed is an oft-stated but rarely-supported opinion. Both best-sellers and literary award winners are not nearly so segregated.
I maintain that even active disdain for romance novels (while perhaps narrow-minded) is not automatically a disdain for female things because they are female. Women who think James Bond is misogynistic trash or superhero comic books are stupid, juvenile power fantasies are not generally accused of hating on men in general.
First, I did not in any way imply that men who think romance is trash are "hating on women in general". I said that I found this – this particular article – to hoist hist fic by emphasising that it is not "books for girls". I was in particular thinking of this quote (by Hilary Mantel who is, AFAIK, a woman):
The accusation is that authors are ducking the tough issues in favour of writing about frocks. There is a certain strand of historical fiction of which this is certainly true; it is chick-lit with wimples."
She is pinning down female things such as "frocks" and "chick-lit" as what she is trying to define hist fic away from. I see no references to "spies", "rapiers" or "military-fetish" in that article. I only see these two, specific examples, and they appeared to me as two more instances of something that I often see.
Literary snobbery is a thing. Men are traditionally considered superior to women. In my experience, these two things together tend to mean that popular literature for females is usually considered to be at the the bottom of the food chain. I have read both and I know which I will be ridiculed for by both men and women equally. I cannot back this up with statistics as it is my experience and I don't keep notes on my conversations (or online review reading), but there's quite a lot of feminist theory of literature that agrees with me. Obviously, that doesn't make me right and you wrong.
But fact remains, Hilary Mantel dissed writing about frocks and chick-lit in that article and no one dissed male coded literature.
ETA: I loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies with a vengeance. Absolutely riveting, brilliant writing. I never thought of it as literary though, just absolutely outstanding storytelling.