Well, I guess it beats saying nothing, or worse,yet, going in the opposite direction & calling women "chattel". Oh, wait, that's what all Bible-based religions did, since their forming! (Along with the followers of the Qu'ran, btw, which just goes to show, religion was made by men, for men.)
The bibble states throughout that women were not just second-class citizens, but actual property of either their father or husband. Misogyny runs deep & rampant in Western religions, some will take longer than others to get over it...

Why is he singling out women?

Religion is an INSULT to women.

You can't insult a god. Feeling insulted shows a lack of omniscience. That would not be definitionally a god, or it would be a flawed god. Do these people ever apply elementary logic ? Perhaps he might try some non supernatural arguments to call out violence against women.

I wonder what prompted him to make such a statement, a drop in the numbers of the female worshippers? An institution that branded women as witches and then horrifically tortured them to death. Although I do not know the exact number of women who were branded as witches, it probably is in the order of tens of thousands or more in the history of the Catholic Church.

I take anything this joker says with nothing more than a grain of salt.