No subject

descriptivist point of view it is certainly part of the language. It
is up to the English Wikipedia community to decide what its house
style will include.

As we are on this topic, it would be interesting to see (again, in a
nicely collected Wikipedia article) to how pairs of gendered
expressions behave in different languages. Without further proof, I
would probably not read too much politics into any usage. For example,
we have in English "he or she" but we also use "ladies and gentlemen"
and probably there is a balance somewhere in the usage of "men and
women" vs. "women and men".[1] In Hungarian we would probably say "n=C5=91k
=C3=A9s f=C3=A9rfiak" ('women and men') and "h=C3=B6lgyek =C3=A9s urak" ('l=
adies and
gentlemen'), while fortunately we only have on pronoun for 'he or
she': "=C5=91" =E2=80=93 so this problem doesn't come up. It is probably di=
fferent
for various languages.

Also, as Theo notes, it would be interesting to cite some good
cognitive linguistics study on the effects of pronouns on people. I
have read about studies that show that the gender of objects in
different languages affects the speakers way of thinking of them (e.g.
describing a bridge as masculine or feminine based on its gender in
the language), but it would be interesting to see if the order of
pronouns has any measurable effect[2].

Anyhow, an interesting practice that might go against gender
stereotyping =E2=80=93 although probably not in a factual encyclopedia arti=
cle
=E2=80=93 is to use simply "she" where one would have to use "he", "he or s=
he"
or "they".

Best regards,
Bence
(also not a native speaker; male)

[1] The balance is in favour of the former, but for example, the UN
uses both with equal frequency, while preferring "he or she" over "she
or he" 20:1.
[2] I am not sure about cognitive connotations, but the strange order
of the phrase might be more difficult to read, and possibly cause
problems who have difficulties reading, thus having an effect on
accessibility of the text. (Probably not an issue in the great scheme
of things, but something to consider for Simple Wikipedia if one was
to transfer any agreed change in usage)