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I watched an episode of Columbo recently. In it they referred to females as 'broads', not heard that one before.
OK, let's start by acknowledging that many derogatory statements have been made by people of less politeness... the word "uncouth" comes to mind. Heck, Col, I've even referred to you as "uncouth" at times - but today that is NOT the case. I'll partly answer the implied question.
According to my now-deceased uncle who saw many USA political changes in his youth, the term "broad" has been around a long time. He thought it might have started around the same time as the Women's Suffrage movement - 1911 or thereabouts. He said it related to the fact that a woman's hips are broader than a man's hips, and when women stopped wearing 10,000 layers of hoop skirts (a slight exaggeration on my part perhaps) and switched to more form-fitting dresses, you could more easily see the general shape of the broader hips.
The presence of women in the military in WW 2 may have exacerbated the use of "broad" as for example, the women of the US Marine Corps (most often nurses and clerical workers) were often called BAMs - for "broad-axle Marines" (polite version). The less polite version substitutes something else for "axle" though the substitute ALSO begins with an "A" and in the common British version, ends with an "E".