This is a subject I do know something about, and it is complicated. One of my best friends, who is a retired university professor himself, has a professorial wife who is also now retired, but when she was active, she was very involved in university education on a national level e.g. She consulted with Hillary and others on education, and she was always on the short list to fill prospective university presidential openings. She actually taught college professors how to be university presidents and as such, she had enormous influence on education on a national basis.
This lady told me in the early 1990s that universities were working to increase the number of females being graduated from college not only in an effort to level the playing field, but also to actually favor females in a effort to promote peace, on a world-wide basis, since females are more peace-loving than males, what with all of our testosterone. She, in essence said, they were going to place their finger on the scales to favor females over males in education, and that this effort would benefit the world-over.
We had this conversation over dinner one night, and she actually admitted that higher education was working to this end of favoring females over males in an effort to promote women in leadership roles.