The "Women in Engineering" group where I worked was instrumental in retaining multiple good engineers who would've definitely left otherwise after some gendered issues (asked out by coworkers, asked whether they were an engineer in meetings, etc). I was a mentor for early career engineers and I had a woman talking about leaving but the woman in engineering group at work helped her immensely and she's a top performer.

Systems affect different people differently (which is blindingly obvious but bears repeating) so if you want a meritocracy based on actual ability you need to do your best to nurture all people with ability, which isn't a one size fits all approach. I knew multiple people who absolutely kicked ass that benefitted from targeted programs (and from their success we've all benefited from these programs), there's just also a lot of dumb shit out there for DEI, too.