However, one must remember the role of women in early Jewish tradition, subservient to men. It is my belief that patriarchy played a role in how the bible was written. As is still common in our culture it would have been even more common in ancient Jewish culture to use masculine pronouns when speaking of a community. This would explain the masculine pronouns. When speaking of humankind it is common even still today to use the term mankind.
Mankind is assumed to mean women as well as men.
However, if one speaks of womankind it is not thought to mean men. Again we have a cultural biases coming into play. I call these misuses of masculine pronouns patriarchal pronoun errors . They occur throughout the Bible, and western society as a whole. He argues that terms such as humanity are impersonal, while man is personal and therefore irreplaceable.