Romance Novel MMO?

We discussed further this morning the idea from a couple days ago for a 19th century MMO. Things like skill trees (gambling, drinking, flirting, driving and riding), action bars (flirt, simper, rap knuckles with fan), PvP (duels, boxing, racing).

It leads to a question, though, about how to escape the fact that if the game designers are themselves gamers, and primarily male, and the gaming audience is primarily male (the daedalus project suggests mmo gamers are 85 percent male), how do you execute a game based on a genre that appeals primarily to women (according to the Romance Writers of America, 78 percent of readers are female). Something like this represents simultaneously a huge risk, and a huge opportunity. If you build it, will they come?