However, if you are too focused on hiring female engineers, you can bring the overall quality of the team down. Now I do not mean female engineers are any less competent compared to male engineers, but I will give an example from personal experience.
The manager at my current day job has (in a team meeting) expressed that "females are better". The reasoning was that females are more creative and in general, more social. This idea of "females > males" was expressed multiple times over my time here, and it has really begun to take off. In our last round of hiring a co-op, our team lead said "the new co-op has to be a girl". In the screening phase, the team lead decided we would not interview a few of the male applicants, for no specific reason. We then picked 2 people (1 male, 1 female) for interviews. The female candidate was interviewed by myself, a co-worker, and the team lead. This candidate was not exceptional in any way and was not more skilled than the other candidate. She was hired the second the interview ended.
A year prior, we had a female co-op student who was on a 8 month term. 3 months into the term, she was given an offer by the manager for a full-time position. This offer was in secret, and other teams were not to hear about it until her last month. As she was still in school, she expressed that she wanted the job but wanted to finish her last year and graduate. And so the position (and budget), was saved for her for the year, regardless of whether or not she was able to graduate.
I have no problem against hiring female engineers. However, hiring female candidates over male candidates simply because of gender is discrimination, and that's not something I agree with. This kind of discrimination can also be detrimental to the success of the team/company.
Simple example: Let's assume 10 of 30 (about 33%) applicants are female. The team decides to select 10 people for interviews (yes there are places that do not interview based on fit alone but fit + headcount). Since there are only 10 females, if we only select females, there are a few problems. 1) We lose out on any male candidates that may be a better fit (which also comes from a pool of 20/30). 2) We're forced to spend money and resources on candidates that essentially have a 0% chance of being hired because they would not have passed the screening if sexism were not in play.