Sasha, funny you say that- this is reminiscent of a conversation I had with a friend awhile ago when I expressed fears about being a father to girls these days (he has three awesome ones). He was taken aback that preferential hiring policies would make me concerned.

Not only do such policies devalue female achievement, I genuinely believe such policies exacerbate rather than mitigate sexism (depending on one’s definition of a sticky term). If you want to give people an excuse to distrust a female pilot, say you’re going to deliberately lower standards so as to hire female pilots. The end result, I fear, would be a world where one side infantilizes women and the other utterly distrusts them (if that’s not a false prophecy for its already having happened).

You allude to the salient point- is it fair that a woman needs to struggle against sexism? No, but the flip side is that it makes her achievements legitimately wayyy more impressive.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t things can’t be improved far further, or justification for anything. I just feel the modern left is interested in political power at the cost of retrogression on such social matters.