Are we sure that penguins can actually tell each other apart by gender and it's not just pairing up with whoever's most convenient and some of them get lucky?
I think this means that they only choose last years partner 15% of the time. Still higher than random chance, but in no way dependant on their partner.
Was looking up something else on Wikipedia and stumbled onto this fact. I know this is not exactly related to the point you wanted to make, but I might as well share it.
It's no definite proof, it is just very unlikely that they can remember their former partner but can't differentiate between sexes. They look all the same to us but not to them.
Someone else debunked my comment but they still more likely go to their old partner so they seem to remember them
We humans are very well adapted to tell humans apart, penguins are very well adapted to tell penguins apart. They have gender specific mating calls for example.