Laura being a woman is totally irrelevant.
She was establishing her credibility as someone who visits and posts here. This fact helps us have a better understanding of what she is doing in her more public role, and that may be relevant in the future. Glad to know.
The bottom line is that Laura CANNOT hide that she's a woman while achieving that objective. Any more than Q+ can hide that he's a man while achieving a similar objective.
Laura did nothing to try to capitalize on (or even announce) her gender while posting here. That you happen to know Laura's gender from external sources is an irrelevant side-effect. So the "rule" simply does not apply. You have to understand the reasons for rules sometimes to know their application, or things get silly real fast.
Most of us don't reveal anything about our identities. Profession, gender, race, geographic location - usually irrelevant. We are all Anon. We don't reveal our gender because it doesn't matter, that's what the rule is about (don't pretend that it does). But in the case of people in the public eye who have some reason to let us know they hear us, they can't have us not know their gender - because of information that comes to us from OUTSIDE this board. That's just … different by necessity.