It is good to ask these questions because there are simply biological issues that the other sex is not going to have personal experiences with. Pregnancy and breastfeeding? I know there are considerations that someone who has not gone through these events (including women without children) are just not going to relate to.
We also can't control how people react to us in person and the assumptions that are made based on our appearance, regardless of what are personality is. You aren't going to resolve those issues without identifying what they are in the first place.
Personally I would like it if the series was "ask an engineer who is female" rather than "ask a female engineer" though.