I think that treating women differently just reinforces the prejudice that women are less capable than men.
This also adds fuel to those weak men than hate women. It fuels more prejudice undercuts the hard work of those it claims to help. It might feel and sound good but I believe it causes harm to those it claims to help as well as the rest of society.
If a function can be performed by a discriminated class overtime a free market rewards greed and punishes bigotry. Those evil men that hate women have to lose money to maintain their behavior. Handicapping a group is an admission of inferiority on an institutional level. That's not to say their is an inferiority but an acceptance of a perceived one.
Academia is not the real world. I believe a reckoning is coming and should be obvious to anyone paying attention for at least the last 15 years.
Where did we go wrong? Why is academia so dependent on government money?
It's not just money, although that is a factor. The real truth is the iron law of bureaucracy is at work. I would say that the government money has prolonged a system that would long have been destroyed, improved, or replaced by free market forces. Some might contend that all universities are not public nor funded publicly. And that's true. However, all universities that want to be accredited have to go through an accrediting process. And part of this is to allow them access the student loan programs so that they can have a crop of customers. And I would argue that the student loan system is what has kept these universities going as well as created many of the problems that we see today.
Academia is a fantasy world. It isn't dealing with the same problems that most businesses or service providers deal with. They are insulated from them by government money. So yeah, Fiat is a key problem.