You’re getting hung up on the gender of a hypothetical person brought up as an example in this one instance, where I can’t see why any result would be cause for consternation when, as you say, the focus here should be on the class factor.

I assume the example here was a poor woman in order to maximize juxtaposition of the example versus the subject matter of the cited article, which is about a rich dude. Whatever the reason, this seems irrelevant.