Well, you have now made me put Dragon Age down on list of things for me to look into.

while I can't say that's not where it's headed with certainty, there's enough misogyny and gender fail that I very, very much doubt that it will ever go there.

Agreed. Yeah, there are many problems in ASoIaF and yet there are still many things that I do greatly like about the series. I won't leave any spoilers because I don't know how far you are in the books...