Ahh yes, people not in software development thinking everything is just easy to do.

Not only is there a large dev cost for a gender+race in terms of time and resources, there is a server hit as well in having to load data for another character type everywhere in the game. While not directly like inventory situation where it follows you everywhere, there is the aspect of how many unique types of characters we have to keep loading for assets. Male Viera face 5/voice 1, Female Lala face 2/voice 5, so on. Not tact on all your unique gear, and other special things that each job/race has and now we are adding new formulas to the system.

This additional set of instructions is likely possible with additional server capacity and code upgrades. Such as they already budget growth in the MMO system itself for each expansion, probably allocated some of it for this, maybe even at an expense of a few always-follow-your-player things like inventory slots or currency or what not. The removal of belts is a good comparison, they are removing a rather large always-follow-you+stat asset and trading it for more dedicated weapon/ring slots, maybe some of this allocation went to help gender races as well.