Over the years, I have shared flight decks with the former Qantas Chairman's son, at least three different Chief Pilot's son's, sons and daughters of Senior Check Captains, sons and daughters of the 1990's Manager Pilot Recruitment (I think 3 are in the airline), a Director's love child, two son's of a Duty Dispatch Manager and so it goes on.
One or two, I would describe their flying as "agricultural" however they all passed initial training, all made it passed S/O to F/O and a lot are Captains now days.
Did some type of "positive" discrimination get all of these people onto an assessment day? Who knows.
Did they all have to stand on their own once in for assessment, and jump through the process like I did? Yes...
Do they hold their own as pilots? Largely, yes.
I don't see a lot of difference between that in the past and some type of weighting to increase the throughput of females in the assessment process - but they have to hold their own from there.
I'm on a type that gets a lot of the new recruits and my right seat usually changes soon into the flight with one of the two S/O's and I have found thus far the new recruits regardless of gender to be of a very high quality and standard.