Voice acting ability, more like. FemHawke is... good, but not WHOA good, if you catch my meaning. Whereas Ms. Hale has a spectacular ability to show emotion in her voice, and more importantly, make you FEEL that emotion (not that it's perfect, because her queen-in-heat mode is cringe-worthy).

MaleHawke is just so much better than FemHawke in terms of VA, that FemHawke just fades into the background.

The accent does affect things, though. FemHawke has a vague RP accent, which in my head makes her sound snooty by default LOL