No.

There are no major differences between a male and female Shepard other than romance options, and an occasional minor dialog (think of the condescending mercs on Omega during the Dossier:Archangel mission in ME2).

The major difference between the two comes down to the voice actor and romance paths.

Even if you could find the file(s) it may be trickier than just replacing it with a blank. You need to figure out first whether each environment is a separate pre-rendered file, or if there are a few files being rendered on-the-fly.

I've removed individual sounds and animations with some success in other games. Specifically, I tend to remove spell-effects in MMOs to reduce lag.

Assuming the first case, you may have some luck. If there is a separate "steps in water" file and "steps with echo" file, you could well be able to do what you're asking. Even if you can though, you should do a little research to see what Origin does regarding check-sums on your game files, as modding may throw off your game enough to get you kicked or banned -even if it's not cheating.

If the second case is true, then the short answer is, unless you are a hardcore programmer, it's probably not worth your time. But it's an interesting thought, and I may look further into this one if animations/sound become a problem in multi-player. Most likely the only work around is to lower SFX sounds and you would definitely be losing other things if you choose that option.