>Is it not rational, in fact extremely smart, to have a preference toward electing women into office, when all other factors are more or less equal or less important?

If one assumes falsehoods, many irrational decisions becomes rational. For example, like the assumption that a male politician doesn't care about women's issues. In fact, I live in a country with 40% of the parliament being women, even though 60% of the voters are women. Women decide the outcome of the election, which might be one reason that men are used in forced labour but women are not.

Anyways, if the choice is between a male and a female politician who are completely identical in every respect other than gender, then it's a roll of dice - but such a situation is not realistic.