In practice, it’s mostly about in-group signalling.

But the idea was to emphasise the physical aspects of power/discrimination. It’s not a pure synonym for person. It should be used when you are talking about something where the actual body is particularly relevant. That’s mostly when you want to emphasise physical assault.

It works here, because she feels at risk not because she’s female in her head, but because she’s likely smaller/weaker or perhaps “looks” like a target. She’s a person wandering around in a female body, and is therefore has different risks than a person wandering around in a male body. (Actually debatable which one is at higher risk overall, depends on circumstances.)

They’re not in trouble for making X amount of drugs.

They’re in trouble for not reporting outlier pharmacies (that seemed to be ordering far more than opiates other pharmacies).

But also, the quota system doesn’t work like you’re thinking. They just tell you to wind down production after demand decreases for whatever reason (e.g., new competitor drug that’ll reduce demand for the old one or tighter prescribing rules that limit access.) They don’t artificially limit supply to be less than demand.

Imagine if they did. Now there’s a shortage. Who can’t get access? The honest consumer, who’s using a reputable doc and pharmacy? Or the addict who’ll put whatever legwork required to get their fix?

Targeting supply via quotas would be an incredibly blunt weapon. You’d have to hurt a lot of innocent consumers before you started having an effect on addiction.

https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/debunking-the-myths-of-controlled-substance-quotas

So what they were trying to do was find/target specific outliers who were overprescribing. Manufacturers (and pharmacies) are getting sued for not co-operating with that attempt.