I stumbled on this Wikipedia article and it gives a name to the overwhelming trend towards assigning positive attributes to women on a wide-scale basis. This trend is most seen on television commercials featuring the smart woman and the bumbling man, which seems to be the norm these days. Sure, this trend could be excused by the fact that women control the lion’s share of consumer spending, but if you look at other aspects of today’s society, you will see that this effect bleeds over into all areas of life.

Women tend to receive lighter sentences than men for the same crime, their physical tests for rigorous jobs are easier, men are more likely to get blamed for domestic violence despite that women are reported to be the perpetrator in a majority of cases (70.7%). A large part of the bias towards women is seen in instances like these. From the article:

The “women are wonderful” effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with the general social category of women compared to men. This bias reflects an emotional bias toward women as a general case. The phrase was coined by Eagly & Mladinic (1994) after finding that both men and women participants tend to assign positive traits to women, with woman participants showing a far more pronounced bias. Positive traits were also assigned to men by both genders of participants but to a less significant degree. The authors supposed that the positive general evaluation of women might derive from the association between women and nurturing characteristics. This bias is suggested as a form of benevolent sexism -towards females- which is a concept within the theoretical framework of Ambivalent sexism.[citation needed] It can also be seen as an example of hostile sexism towards men under the same framework.

The ‘women are wonderful’ effect is the main reason that women can largely screw up without consequences, and that coupled with peoples’ overall positive bias towards people they found attractive , means that young, attractive women are excused for bad behavior the most often. This tends to make those women feel entitled, and it feeds the feminist agenda and the feminine imperative. From the last link:

When women do bad things, they are treated like children morally, let off the hook, protected from the consequences, yet they are allowed to make potentially disastrous choices without adult supervision, choices that men will pay for when those choices go wrong. Thus women receive substantially lesser penalties for crimes, and are not really expected to honor contracts – yet any business that discriminated against contracts signed by women would be in big trouble, even though it is also in trouble when it tries to enforce those contracts.

The underlying mechanism leading to the Feminine Imperative is that adult women are assumed to be adult, to be capable of making responsible decisions about sex and reproduction. And when it becomes painfully obvious that they are not, then men have to pick up the pieces, without however having the power and authority to restrain women from making bad decisions.

I also think that this effect is feeding the entitlement women have today; the entitlement to the best man (without being the best woman), the best job (without being the best candidate), etc.