“You got this because you’re a girl.”

This touches on why I have really come around to the view that diversity programs and affirmative action are merely perpetuating the negative stereotypes that we want to eliminate. By lowering standards in the name of diversity, we are essentially reinforcing to everyone that those benefiting from the reduction of standards are in fact less qualified, even when they aren't in reality. Pardon the crude expression, but at the end of the day you can't pee on someone's leg and tell them it's raining. They may smile and talk about the rain to be politically correct to your face, but the truth is easy to see.

This bothers me greatly. Some of the best and brightest engineers I work with are women, and they are not there due to lax standards. But until we stop with the "diversity program" stuff and the mentality that woman > man because of gender, we aren't going to move the football forward. We're simply perpetuating and even ingraining the perceptions that women are in fact inferior, hence the need to give them an advantage to "level the playing field."