I for one (single data point) was hugely excited for Bosch's cornering traction technologies (C-ABS/MTC) when they came out in 2014, but have never been in the demographic that buys a new (or nearly new) KTM 1290 or MTS1200. So perhaps it's not a matter of dislike, but "not at this price point".
Chicken and the egg?
Yeah, it's gonna solve itself over time. You can get nice, used bikes with the full electronics suite for around 5-7k now, which is good.
Briefly - I don't work with CMSP or the like due to time. I can spend a couple of hours helping a friend learn to ride a few times a year, but the whole commit of weekends, etc, is a bit much for me.
When you say you've never seen this happen, well, I don't quite know what to say here, cause every woman I know who rides has either a laughing experience about it or a "I'm never going back to that dealership because jfc never want to step foot in that place again after how they treated me". Not to mention the reactions my wife gets when she was riding her 999, 1290 SuperDuke, etc. It's endemic to the community. The endless commentary about "that's a big bike for a little lady", the posturing, the generalized commentary is just cringeworthy.
There's already been a couple of women talking about and pointing out that the gear choices are marginal in this thread. Off the top of my head, scorpion tends towards a very unflattering, boxy fit, dianese is built for slender italian models, A* tends towards the same, Olympia and Aerostitch are both not particularly flattering, same with Klim. If you want something that both looks nice, and fits properly, and is protective, you're unlikely to have very many options unless you are a very particular body type.
Hell, we have enough problems around the distinction between CE Approved, CE Certified, DOT, SNELL, ECE, etc, without throwing the fact that a lot of the gear just flat out doesn't fit into the mix.
Wouldn't doing the opposite of what you did - speaking out and informing the sales rep that there are women buyers and that you were looking to buy and now won't because of that behavior help in educating them to think differently?
In the example i gave above about asking the guy before the woman - she spoke up and called me out on it. I was so embarrassed to say the least and apologized several times. I haven't done that again since that day.
Just curious why your husband didn't just point to you and tell the sales guy "She's the one shopping today, not me", or simply inform them that you're both looking for stuff. That's what I do when that happens to us (in any store for any purpose).
Not trying to justify his behavior, but communication is a two way street, and if the guy didn't know he was doing something wrong, pretty sure if you went in again, it would happen again.
I think we can all agree that for the vast majority of those situations, the sales person isn't necessarily off base. (/me points to recent BARF survey and the demographic results of people who are: interested in motorcycles, frequent internet forums, and take internet surveys).
Both of these points are totally reasonable if you're talking about a friend or a pre-existing relationship that someone might be invested in. But more broadly, at a dealership that intends to provide a decent customer interaction, asking women (or minorities) to start their motorcycling career by calling out their salespeople on their sexist (or racist) assumptions isn't really going to smooth the entry to the hobby.
If folks spent all their time pointing out the casual sexism/racism they experience on a daily basis they wouldn't have time for much else. This is on the dealerships and us in the community to stop from happening if we want to see more people join us.
Also, the surveys you point out are primarily sampling from motorcycle enthusiast populations, which are male dominated - however, it appears that those demographics are pretty saturated at this point and if we want to see the industry keep growing we're going to need to reach out to more than just the folks that are part of the community now, and that's going to require work.
(btw - props to you, MotoBeck, for realizing that you'd made a bad assumption and changing your behavior accordingly)