Yeah, seems a little 'odd' to me, very "1990's" thinking when boys pretty much were the only gamers. Granted that when using such stylised character design you can't realistically use the same rigs and animation with different 'shells' because the proportions are so exaggerated so I do get that, but I'm just not wholly convinced by that argument, especially for a big (50+) dev studio.
Having said that, there's a lot of movement in the industry to after sales/release "added value" so it may be that they could include females, not in Brink 2.0 as those post hinted, but as DLC additions that have to be purchased.