https://www.smh.com.au/education/a-...ring-entry-bar-for-women-20190828-p52lpp.html
Note: the ATAR is the largest single method that Australian universities use for entry into degrees. It is an index that compares the achievement of students in Year 12 across the country. It is an index with higher numbers meaning you beat more students.
It's difficult to believe that Dr Agarwal has sufficient mathematical werewithall to hold an engineering PhD, given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.
I don't know about her math skills but she isn't demonstrating the lack of reasoning skills that you are by claiming it is purely a matter of simple math that lower ATAR = lower quality Engineers upon graduation.
Not only do ATAR scores ignore everything that was learned during University and while obtaining the degree, but they are not even a reflection of directly relevant skills when entering an Engineering program. ATAR is an aggregated score composed of grades in high school classes that mostly have little to no relevance to Engineering. Even the most relevant courses, like physics, entail a large % of material that practicing Engineers do not make actual use of. Even much of the math needed is more plug and chug into known equations using computers rather than the king of theoretical calculus and complex by hand calculations that high school calculus course often center on.
So, contrary to the assumption inherent in your comment, there far from a 1:1 correspondence between a difference of X in ATAR scores and a difference of Y in the quality of work a person is able to do upon graduating with an Engineering degree. Plus, the "quality of graduates" isn't even solely about what a graduate is potentially capable of doing, it includes what they actually will do given not only their skills, but their motivation, drive, and uniqueness of the perspective they bring which determines how much what they wind up doing actually adds to what would be there otherwise.
Given how rampant sexism against women in STEM is, any woman willing and capable of putting up with it and successfully completing an Engineering degree is likely to have greater motivation and perseverance than the average male who completes such a degree that many men would have bailed on had they faced the type of adversity that female Engineers do. In addition, woman comprise half of the end users of the things that are engineered, for some products the vast majority of users, and sex differences are a factor in usability in a number of applications, females engineers would have a decided advantage in adding quality to products that is otherwise generally overlooked. No, this doesn't presume that no man is ever capable of adopting a female perspective, just that all humans are generally not very good at it, especially if they simply lack the relevant experiences and therefore knowledge.
In sum, not only is it highly questionable how much a lower ATAR translates into post degree Engineering capabilities, even in the decontextualized vacuum of academic work, but further, differences in those capabilities may not translate into difference in the quality of actual Engineering work performed in the real world where drive, social skills, perspective, and access to relevant but usually overlooked user experiences all interact to determine the ultimate "quality of Engineers" produced by that system.
I do wonder what Australia's anti-discrimination Acts are for. Clearly, they're not about stopping discrimination.
The Acts were created for stopping the otherwise rampant discrimination that has occurred for centuries and would still be occurring against women and minorities. Since there were virtually no instances of white males being the victims of discrimination, the Acts clearly were not created to solve a problem that did not exist. However, those centuries of discrimination shaped the entire culture and put in place entrenched inequalities that continue to have impacts even when overt acts of such discrimination are removed, and will continue to do so for likely as or more centuries than that discrimination was openly allowed. Some forms of discrimination that favors those historically harmed groups are thought to be useful if not neccessary to stop that continued momentum of past discrimination and reverse it's harmful effects. Yes, these acts of reverse discrimination do violate the general principle of fairness to individuals, but they do so in an effort to mitigate the continued harms done to people from the centuries of violations of that same principle, and it is that harm that anti-discrimination laws were created to prevent.
The immense difference, lies in the clear ethical difference in goal and intent, with historical discrimination designed to cause harm to select outgroups based on beliefs they are inherently less capable or deserving, while the efforts to discriminate in favor of those previously harmed groups is done to undo centuries of harm, without belief in any group being less deserving or capable, and without malice toward those members of the majority group that are negatively impacted.
Granted, one can make a reasoned argument that the long term impact of such well intentioned efforts to reverse the harm of past discrimination is ultimately negative and counterproductive, and that any gains are outweighed by those costs (which I myself have argued elsewhere). But one cannot reasonable equate the bigotry and selfish malice that motivates traditional discrimination of the majority against minorities with far more noble and well intentioned efforts to stop the momentum of past injustices that continue to cause harm by temporarily inverting who gets the advantages of favoritism.
