[katelynsills]

That's definitely a valid point, but there's two things that make me disagree. First, if you look at the game with the perspective of making the game enjoyable to women, you wouldn't put in mild sexism similar to that which already annoys them in real life, especially if it often comes from friendly characters that you can't trounce in response. :) Video games are supposed to be fun! So, from that I assume that Dragon Age Origins wasn't made with women in mind as the audience, or if it was, they didn't do it very enjoyably.

Secondly, I think attributing the mild sexism in the game to intentional world-building is a bit of a stretch, considering that the main religious figure in the game is a warrior woman prophet. I don't think women warriors would be such a surprise in that world! It's more likely that it's just something that came from our current society that got mapped onto the game because the creators didn't think about it. It's unfortunate, because with such an interesting mythology, you could do some really novel cultural things in that world.

Anyways, I've gotten off topic, but I do think there are characteristics that make it easier to blend into the programmer lifestyle (such as video games) and characteristics that make it harder (such as liking fashion) and all of those characteristics contribute to the person's choice of whether to become a programmer, especially since programming is more of an all-consuming occupation than most. And, these characteristics are not equally shared between men and women.