Are female Kerbals low priority?

[Ron2]

I bought the game last weekend for my 11 year old daughter. (I'm her dad.) She's really into it so far (3 or 4 hours). I'm bummed though, that 100% of the characters look masculine, sound masculine, and have masculine names. This all subtly says that being an astronaut is for boys. It doesn't matter if a game designer says that Kerbals are asexual -- in the game, they're not. I see that requesting female Kerbals is on the list of questions not to be asked, so I'm asking the meta question -- are female Kerbals low-priority and if so, why?

On the "what not to suggest" list, it's not a major feature or in any of the other categories. It's way down in the miscellaneous section, below "Aliens" and above "random failures/malfunctions". I'm interpreting this as being very low-priority.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/36863-What-not-to-suggest

I'm surprised and disappointed about all this. KSP is otherwise a really neat sandbox game, but I couldn't recommend using it in a classroom, for example.

[Vanamonde]

Actually, Ron2, female Kerbals have been placed on the forum's list of things not to suggest because, oddly enough, it's a topic that usually ends up in bitter arguments. It's been discussed endlessly without result, and is something we've just had to rule out in the interests of keeping our forum civil. Which is why this thread will be closed now.