Interesting thread. The resistance against female pilots in both the military and airlines demeans us all as a profession. Back in the 80's, we were able to push through the resistance, and surprise, the general standard of the girls that entered the ranks was of a general standard, like the boys. The treatment of them wasn't equal, it was more often filled with resentment, which I found difficult to comprehend. Of all professions, why would sitting on your backside be considered to be gender dependent? Hanna Reich, Nancy Bird Walton, etc, surprisingly, female, and competent. Nadia of NTPS engineering fame, female, and able to stand tall against all she surveyed over her boots on her desk post flight. My mother, took up flying at 40, ferried aircraft around the world, and didn't make a big thing out of it. What is not reasonable is to harassed when conducting a professional duty, and certainly when doing something that purportedly the rest of us do as well out of enthusiasm and love of flying. Why is that either restricted to a gender, or something that should be considered with resentment?
Quota's have a place to ensure the restoration of balance to an imbalance that may occur naturally or through historical bias. Aviation has that bias, and when we stop the B/S of the bias there would be no need for the concept of quotas.
I have yet to fly with a pilot that was incompetent and was so due to a quota. I have flown with many incompetent pilots, and have had the frustration of attempting to ameliorate that level of incompetence. The two cases that I have dismally failed to mitigate were one male, and one female, and their incompetence was of a nature that had nothing at all to do with their standing or sitting to relieve themselves. They were not chosen for the gender or nationality, and they were not terminated for gender or nationality; they were terminated after some 200 hrs of concentrated flight time, they could not fly an ILS or maintain a speed anywhere near V2+10 for a departure, yet held CLP/ME/IR qualifications issues to a standard that beggars belief.
Harassment has no place, in the cockpit, home, office, anywhere. Harassment results in the victim being victimised, every single time. Who the victim is occasionally a surprise, The more that we divide the genders the greater the potential for harassment to be a factor, and equally the greater the threat of weaponising of allegations. The statistics favour the allegations, however, nothing can be assumed in relationships, except between a human and a dog. Dogs are easy, dogs are loyal, dogs don't need quotas, they love you anyway, Dogs dote on every word of wisdom you deign to espouse, dogs don't make those that are trying to maintain the last bastion of their gender worry about their seat at the table. Occasionally dogs do better radio work than I do, and can fly better on occasions. My dog used to fly on patrols with me, and she spent all of her time down at the galley eyeballing the steaks. (Engineers were responsible for her shape approximating mine in her later years). My dog went flying in the airforce before the airforce condescended to have it's first female pilot.
Time as an FO in Qantas does not reflect any competency issue in itself, only the FT-9s or whatever are being used there do so.