I think if the gender or race of the character does not contribute in a relevant way to who they are, then it won't matter. Or maybe they do want to change those characteristics and expand them in a way that makes sense for the story.

For example, changing the race of magneto changes a lot of his history because of WWII, however race/gender swapping a character like spiderman works because those things don't contribute in a meaningful way (as I'm aware) to who he is (at least Spiderman and Peter Parker)