I've gone to HR before because I was being harassed by another employee and you'd damn well better believe he knocked this chauvinistic shit off after they sat him down.
Project much? The guy did not grab her ass, harass her endlessly, or make an off color comment about her, he just mentioned prematurely and without cause that she was of a fertile age and could spontaneously combust as soon as the sperm hit the egg, which I am pretty sure, even the most dense coworker knows is moronic. If anything, he looked like the fool among his coworkers.
I'm not projecting at all.
His remarks were sexist and racist. Do you disagree with that?
His delivery definitely sucks, but I can kind of see his issue...if you are the only one that can do a task, that is a legitimate concern.
This I have an issue with. If I got pregnant, I would make sure my job could get done on mat leave. Assuming I am going to get pregnant and planning for such is super problematic. It leads to thinking like "we can't give kitkat this 6 month study because she might get pregnant!" Due to health risks, I would have to announce right away and consider short term disability.
His delivery definitely sucks, but I can kind of see his issue...if you are the only one that can do a task, that is a legitimate concern.
But she's not pregnant. He doesn't even know if she's going to have kids ever, let alone any time soon. The issue is not the work, it's that this jackass assumes that because she's a young woman, she's about to have a baby any day, and he comments on it constantly.
I'm in a male dominated industry and was the youngest female manager and the highest ranking female employee, at a company that had a total "old boys club" mentality. Almost all the other females were admin! I did experience truly career impacting discrimination and weighed all my options but chose not to pursue legal action.
For things like crude jokes, etc, I usually just let it roll off my back or will make a joke/warning back, like you better make sure HR didn't hear that. However, if something is directed at you, you need to put that person in their place right then, for the group to hear. In your case, I might have said, if you're implying that I'll be taking leave, I have no intention of doing that anytime soon. However any one of us could be in a car accident tomorrow, so it would be wise for the company to train a backup. I know it can be hard to think of the right thing to say, so plan some responses ahead of time.
If you are truly uncomfortable with something that happened, email your boss or HR about. Print the email and their response, or send it to a personal email address. If things get worse if you do decide to have a baby, you may want that evidence that you complained and nothing was done.
I work in a male dominated career, too. I've been mistaken for a booth babe (laughable, when you see me), the "coffee girl", and such by people visiting our office/seeing me at trade shows.
It is _wrong_ for this coworker to be discussing this. It's rediculous that your boss is just trying to push it off to the side. It's something I'd consider a poisonous work environment, and I'd be looking for a new job asap. No way would I put up with this type of behaviour long term.
The only thing I can think of that might be a solution outside of finding a new job would be to call out the person on his comments very publicly the next time he does it. When he brings it up a team meeting, respond loudly enough above other voices that your womb is not a topic for public discussion, and that he needs to stop talking about it before you go to HR about it.
I once had to verbally smack an idiot (at my last company) in a similar fashion for a similar type of thing. Never heard a peep out of him after that, and no one else took objection to how I called him out on it.