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You're pretty much arguing for the same thing that Cooke is but from the other side. You may well be right.
However, I think that culturally, men's racing can't be perceived to get easier. It just wouldn't wash with the audience in general. So I think Cooke's assertion is fair that races should be the same length. The point isn't so much about the actual length of races but the UCI regulations about how long they can be.
However, I'm not convinced that this should happen immediately. This is in no way meant to belittle the capabilities of professional women cyclists. However, they are collectively used to racing shorter courses and training for that. A sudden jump in race lengths is the sort of thing that might lead to an increase in racing/training injuries and/or doping. It's something that should happen over maybe the course of 5 years.
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The_Seldom_Killer
Going back to Cooke's assertion that Womens' races should be the same length as mens' - why would you want that? The biggest strength of womens' cycling is the shorter stages. That translates to more exciting racing, almost always. Coverage for the mens' races is almost always for the second half, and because people don't do elephantine amounts of EPO, amphetamines and blood bags these days the 100km solo winning attack is a thing of the past - so the first half of races is sheer boredom. I'd argue for the mens' races/stages to be 50km shorter on most days. Look at the Queen stage of this year's Giro:
That looks like 5000m of climbing up some brutal roads - Giau is insane, but overall the Dolomite roads are pretty steep anyway - and 210km. It'll look spectacular, but there's just too much work to do that day for any interesting racing to happen.
You want a massive battle that looks good on the telly, then you need shorter stages which allow riders to properly compete.