In the end, what should matter is skills of a specific person and recruiting based on getting the best of the best. Otherwise it is lacking objectivity. Your brother's example comes to mind - would the situation be better if they didn't push unqualified people based on a less represented gender?

Overall what I am saying is this. You can take action, or you can decide not to. Taking action and it resulting in incredible bias, misogyny, misandry, racism is in the end worse, than if someone hadn't prefferred employees / students based on the characteristics that make those things appear. Not having special programs based on background means it's everyone for themselves, and the best candidate is selected. It seems extremely hard to have a perfect program that changes the hiring / enrolling students process. Otherwise I see two sides of the same coin - a company not hiring a 25yo woman, since she's part of the demographic most likely to have maternity leave, and a company doing the exact opposite and hiring women because they are underrepresented in the field.

Please explain to be the need to have women in engineering / leadership. What's a difference between a woman that knows CAD, went to study engineering / mechanics, etc, and a man that knows CAD, went to study engineering / mechanics etc. I see none. I wouldn't hire someone because of their sex, had everything been equal (which we all know never are). If a woman has great work ethics and has the knowledge / expertise I need, I hire a woman. If a man has the knowledge / expertise I need and great work ethics, I hire a man. It doesn't matter what sex they are, what they like to do in their own time, how they dress (maybe only when it'd be a customer facing job). What matters is how good of a worker they'll be.