It has been commonly used and accepted in the case of unknown or unspecified gender, though it is rapidly falling out of favour for that case. In part because I think it's quite hard to say that it's truly 'genderless', it's embedding a 'default' into the language which perhaps is undesirable.
Apparently it started in the 18th century, so there's a lot of inertia to overcome to get people to change.
But she says it was from the 18th century onwards that people started using male pronouns when describing someone of a non-specific gender in writing and this marks the time when opinions on what pronouns should be used started to change.
"You might have a sentence like 'if a student comes to see the teacher, he must bring his homework', where he is supposed to refer generically to males and females," explains Dr Emma Moore.
I have been learning Italian. Don’t slam me for this if it’s wrong I am a beginner. But there are a number of contexts in Italian to which lei (she) is used. One for polite and respectful use (such as a general in the army, regardless of gender) or if the person’s gender is unknown.
Very formal/polite way to refer to people yes. But in Italian we also have “voi” and its use can be traced back centuries before “lei” started to be used.
