As someone who has hired both males and females for junior and senior engineering positions at several companies, what you are saying is not the case.

The coding challenges and interviews are the same. The decisions of hiring committees I have been on have been actually in general weighted toward white men with experience more often than not, because many of the women I'm seeing are just out of school or with a little experience (which says good things about the future assuming they stick around).

However, I have seen race/gender used as the deciding factor between two candidates who are in all other ways equally excellent and suited for the role (that is, pick the candidate who is not a white male out of two whose skills and resumes and interview performance are equal).