Yeah but most of the public is not really familiar with the Extended Universe they only know about the stuff in the movies, and a few may have watched some of the episodes of Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels.
Except all of those female Jedi I mentioned (with the exception of Nomi Sunrider) were from either the original trilogy or the prequel trilogy. Most of them were masters on the council
Just because there wasn't a female Jedi protagonist in the first two trilogies, doesn't mean there weren't female Jedi in universe.
There is a lot of good material there.
There's an
awful lot of rubbish too. I'm looking at my 'Star Wars' book shelf at the moment, and there's more than 150 pre-Disney EU novels there (and about 15 post Disney ones). I'd say there's only about 30 EU novels that count as 'good' - and most of those aren't tentpole movie sort of stories.
I actually love the back story of things like the History of the Sith. I would have loved a series dealing with the Old Republic, or one dealing with the extended universe that happened after the fall of the Empire as depicted in the various novels, comic books etc. Which I never read, but after the second Trilogy I got into reading the history and lore via the internet especially after playing the Bioware Star Wars game and their MMO.
Part of the problem was laziness. There was so much EU content Abrams and Kennedy borrowed elements without really having a proper appreciation for the where a lot of the plot points, characters and world building elements ended up at, and the process taken to get there. Like grabbing a kettle and not understanding why its hot.
They shoehorned a lot of stuff into the sequel trilogy that didn't mesh well together. There's elements of Zahn's 'Thrawn Trilogy' in the general setting (which are considered some of the best EU writing), but Zahn at least gave us a proper explanation for the fall of the Empire.
There bits of
Dark Empire, the
Jedi Academy trilogy,
Fate of the Jedi and the
Thrawn Trilogy again in the plotting - which is a super mixed bag, because some of its great and some of its execrable.
There are lots of parts of
The New Jedi Order and
Legacy of the Force series in the characters (particularly Ben/Kylo, Luke and Leia) and some other character elements taken from a bunch of other places.
Sticking to the original source material and simply adapting it for movies, TV shows like what the Walking Dead did for the original TV show would be a no brainer path to success, but some people just got to do their own thing....
What original source material?
If you're going with the High Republic as a lead in to a new Star Wars trilogy, you're swimming uphill. Particularly in the risk averse studio environment.
Listen to some of the interviews with Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote Empire, Jedi and The Force Awakens) about the writing process - Disney had put $2.2 billion in cash plus about 37 million shares (then worth about $50 a share, now worth nearly $200 a share) in buying Star Wars and it wanted a win straight away.
If you're going with post Return of the Jedi EU, that's a total no go because you want your familiar characters as audience touchstones, and there's no way to do that with the EU content as it is.
If you want to see how to bring in EU content into the Star Wars universe, look at the Mandalorian and the Rebels cartoon and the final Clone Wars season. Filoni has a proper understanding of what worked and what didn't in the EU - and he borrowed only the bits that worked within the setting and story he was telling.