It is also important to note that the overall reading population in the US is massive. (goodereader.com)
It's also possible that nobody was thinking of ebooks when writing this directive: in 2009, they were still a pretty niche market (I don't have figures for the EU, this site states that only 2 % of the US reading population had an e-book reader in 2009). (politics.stackexchange.com)
But in general, your chances as straight white male of writing a book with character that can be identified with to a large section of the US English reading population are higher, and Alex Dally McFarlane will have to go on dreaming of all books suddenly not having binary gender as a norm. (madgeniusclub.com)