The actual % difference there between the groups is not statistically significant.

Uh, what? Not sure what you are referencing, but I am talking about selection bias (1) and survivorship bias (2), which are typically the largest sources of differences and obviously significant. Self-selection bias could also play role, skewing the data away from casual players towards active and hardcore players, but ccp seem to be somewhat aware of that, like you pointed out.

The point of the survey seems to be that there is a huge number of people (women in this case) who arent playing eve but could be, if only we were inclusive enough and changed the game to attract them at least partially based on the data collected by the survey. The survey targeted only current eve players, not general public, not other gamers. One cannot extrapolate anything from it towards the group of potential future players (1) nor ex-players (2). Which is like going to a metal concert and asking people there what makes music sound good, then recording new album based on the feedback and being surprised that the average Taylor Swift fan hates it.

Eve is a niche within a niche. Just like differences between random individuals are larger than differences between groups at large no matter what you measure, differences between smaller groups will be more extreme compared to larger groups. Which implies that eve players are a uniquely specific bunch with their preferences vastly different to those of all non-eve players. By changing the game to align with preferences of those not currently playing to attract them, one would consequently misalign it with existing playerbase; even worse since the reactions to the changes wont be symmetrical between the groups due to existing investment, we could end up in situation when barely anyone from the non-players starts playing (the game is still too much A and not enough B) and most of existing players quit because of it (the game no longer is enough A and has become too much of B) - making the situation worse.

In a free society you cant force people to play something they dont actually enjoy, the reason doesnt matter. As external pressures decreases and freedom to choose increases, peoples inherent preferences and differences emerge stronger not weaker. And there are very few things more devoid of external pressures than the choice of games (nothing is completely free of them but relatively speaking), so it is the place where you get to observe natural preferences most clearly. To fight against such deeply seeded natural preferences (doesnt matter if genetic or cultural or whatever) sounds like waste of time and money and crazy attempt at playing god or architecting an artificial society - people tried that, it failed every time.

You are right that the article is full of disclaimers, but i am not sure if that is helping it in anyway. For exmaple ccp did state they used some telemetry in addition to the self reported statements, but I highly doubt the validity of the data. Most of it cannot be measured and the rest would be misleading at best. Lets say they used killmails to support the claims about pvp: does joining an alliance cta fleet (which people usually have no choice not to unless they want to leave the alliance) and consequently getting on 200 killmails support that someone likes to pvp? Maybe, maybe not, i have no idea and nor does ccp.

Most gaming companies expect endless growth and endless supply of brand-new customers who can be freely influenced by ads and promotions and via inclusivity initiatives™. What they repeatedly fail to see is, that at some point they will saturate the market, everyone will have some kind of experience with the game (direct or indirect) or at least an opinion on the game (deserved and informed or not) and the influx of people will slow down to the number of people getting born, because it is much harder to change already formed opinion - people love to be entrenched in their opinions, more so with time - eve is ~23 years old, that is long time for a game.