Linux build needs 4 Unicode width for pvpython

Currently, it appears the ParaView's Python (Linux only) is built with 2 Unicode width which is incompatible with just about every Linux python distribution I have encountered. I noticed this when trying to import pandas installed via pip under the PYTHONPATH and received an error:

>>> import pandas
...
ImportError: C extension ..../pandas/_libs/tslib.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS4_DecodeUTF8 not built. ...

It appears to me that this could be fixed by building pvpython with 4 Unicode widths, so I am curious if there is any reason why ParaView is width 2 on Linux (Windows and Mac are width 4)?

Any help would be much appreciated!