There’s very little evidence (I might even say none whatsoever) that the presence of female deities and major religious figures determine or even influence in a major way basic gender attitudes.
The thing is – deities and religious figures are not examples that are to be followed, but entities whose positions have to be respected and whose commands (including moral dictates) have to be followed / needs have to be satisfied. Greek goddesses weren’t exactly wussies, but this did not change the fact that compared to their Spartan, Roman or Etruscan fellow women, many Greek females had a, relatively speaking, highly unequal status. And our main source material for this comes from Athens, the very city named after a Goddess of war and wisdom, and where Her cult was pretty much supreme.
Just like I thought that giving example of women faring better in ancient Greece was wrong a few pages before, I think it's wrong now to give Greek Goddesses as examples in issue we try to discuss here. For quite a long period of its existence, there was no "unified Greece" - it's an illusion, created ages later by people who tried to study or perpetrate it, not necessarily in spirit of thorough research. Most of what we call 'ancient Greece' today shared language and culture in very broad sense, but they were scattered city-states, oftentimes warring with themselves or treating either their citizens or gods wildly differently (you yourself give example of Sparta and Athens).
Their gods were also viewed differently in each city state - and while Athena might have been a patron goddess of Athens, she was still an obedient daughter to Zeus (not to mention that she's also Virgin Goddess, which itself brings interesting insight into how Greeks viewed and assigned gender roles).
Her role and character also varied depending on a city-state or people creating myths, ranging form fearless leader who dealt with horrible Typhon by smacking him with entire island of Sicily to vain goddess who competed for Golden Apple together with Hera and Aphrodite or cursed the instrument (flute, if I remember right), because it made her face look funny when she blew into it, making other goddesses laugh at her.
In other words - you can't easily compare the situation of Greeks and their gods with the messianic figure of Andraste (who also existed as historical figure, as much as mythologized her deeds were) who jump-started a cult - not only that, among Southern Thedas, that cult seems to be quite unified, both in terms of customs as well as tenets they believe in. And whether she perpetuated a more gender-equal role of women as it was viewed among, say, Alamari or helped a few crafty women see opportunity and grab power, therefore securing their place thorough religious edicts the fact remains that - like I said earlier - the Chantry remains a matriarchal structure the size and importance of we've never seen on Earth and I fail to see how this could be argued to NOT have an influence on society.
The examples you name? There are virtually no known Viking-era Scandinavian female rulers, though women could be quite influential as wives, daughters, sisters and mothers. They did have considerable authority within the household, but that’s a feature of many societies, particularly ones where the men are away for long periods of time fishing, trading, raiding or warring.
...Which was my point. Please read more carefully what I've written before: "While - overall, through rather long period of time - women had to endure harsh treatment there WERE civilizations on Earth after all that treated women more fairly - not equal maybe, but much better than on other parts of the world".
And the reasons for it were varied. Like you said - women in Scandinavia (as well as among many Slavs) had opportunities to seize more power, even if within male-dominated community. That still translates to better treatment to women after all - there were many things they could not do, but compared to other societies of that period they enjoyed much greater freedoms. They had laws protecting them. If widowed (which, as you pointed out, could have happened frequently) they could be wealthy and own lands. The're also portrayed somewhat differently in written records than in societies where female role was not as prominent.
Same with Egypt. Women could be influential, and during some periods (Old Kingdom) a number of respected positions were open to women. However, all Pharaohs were male, with the exception of Hatshepsut, the earlier Nitocris is thought to have been male actually, while Cleopatra really belongs to the Greek cultural milieu.
Again, I'd like to direct you to what exactly I said: "Egyptian women did as well, at least in certain periods (and so did dark-skinned people of Nubian descent)".
The fact, however, that women were not frequently on the throne (in part due to religious reasons) doesn't mean that they didn't achieve high social status overall. In fact, if I remember it right, women in ancient Egypt had same legal right as men (on paper at least). In fact, even after Greece conquered Egypt, Egyptian women still maintained more right and privileges than their Greek counterparts - they could own and maintain property or conclude legal settlements; they could acquire or free slaves, make adoptions or even be divorced (in which case dowry she brought is returned to her, together with any other divorce settlement).
So were all the Viziers, all the nomarchs and all the generals. The ‘ceiling’ for aristocratic women (especially if they were connected to the Pharaoh as wives or daughters) was relatively high, but nowhere near what is possible in the industrialised modern world.
.... Why do you keep addressing my comment as if I've made a claim that women in Egypt - or any other period - was anywhere near the industrialized, modern world? My point was that there existed periods and societies that didn't treat women in the same manner all throughout the period of history - there DID exist societies in which they could achieve high social status, even if it wasn't entirely equal. None of the societal groups were anywhere as equal as we do in modern time, my point however was to illustrate that open misogyny or racism is not necessarily a constant (or at constant levels) even within the existence of our own civilization.... and - as we see even though those example - it isn't.
I’m not even going to seriously discuss the Minoans. We have no reliable information whatsoever except for what we have thanks to archaeology. None. The relative prominence given to female figures in Minoan iconography is hardly a reliable indicator that Minoan women enjoyed a dominant or even prominent social or political status. Again, see the city of the goddess of war and wisdom called Athena. The main reason Minoan Crete is often used as an example of a possible matriarchy is because of obsolete theories by some dead, predominantly male scholars, which was picked up by later feminists (including the occasional female archaeologist, like Marija Gimbutas).
WHOA... I never went as far as suggesting there was matriarchy on Crete, merely that we have reliable pointers (like Minoan art) about pretty high social standing of women.
By the way, I’m not against fantasy being gender-equal and non-heteronormative. I can even like that kind of fantasy provided it feels believable to me when it comes to the ‘mundane’ (non-magical) aspects. Some of my favourite fictional worlds are decidedly non-white and non-heteronormative. However, what they share is a distinctive ‘Otherness’ and they don’t overtly clash with what we know (or think we know) of human nature.
What we know (or think we know) about human nature is that even if we'd get rid of one glaring issue, people will find other ways to bring others down. We have it in modern world and we have it in Thedas. As I pointed out already, several times, we do know that social standing of women or other groups in DA is different depending on cultural/religious circle a given group finds itself - it's not unified, nor it's anywhere close to some form of unrealistic utopia. It simply happens to be a world in which the issue of gender roles is not as prominent as the issue of, say, social standing or (magical) race*.
*(though color skin still seems to matter. Majority of Orlesian, Fereldan or Tevinter nobles or rulers we see are still white - Barris and Vivienne are notable exceptions, and Barris experiences nothing but derision from noble representative in Thierinfal Redoubt, while Vivienne is known to be ruthless and brilliant player of the game, who achieved her social status despite of her humble origins she doesn't like to talk about and the fact that she is a mage)
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