There is a trend to use the female gender pronoun among some educators and writers in the US these days as a challenge to the established male-only gender pronoun. It is not a very common trend and has not really caught on, but you will run into it from time to time.

This is part of a movement related to using the word "person" instead of "man" - as in "congressperson" as opposed to "congressman" - in order to make the English language more accepting of the female gender and less male-centered. From what I can recall this movement began in the late 80's or early 90's but never really caught on.

Personally, just weighing in as the token "suffragette" (since most of you seem to be male, judging from your comments), I do not think we are going to end discrimination against women by changing the gender of pronouns in sentences. I have no interest in getting into a debate about feminism, but for the sake of discussion I will just say that negative and discriminatory attitudes against women do pervade society, and the roots of this discrimination extend deeply into our culture, traditions and religion. Changing gender pronouns is not going to make a difference and will only confuse people.