snip... Those who spend the time and resources to create opportunities for females, however, have an incentive to do so as the system pays for itself; and even becomes an additional source of wealth in the long term on top of the value added by including a female perspective. Snip...
This is a blind assumption for which there is no evidence, no factual backup, and no logical reason.
I'd say there's a pretty clear relationship between having an incentive for women to work more and creating value over the long term. In an ideal scenario, the woman in question benefits from utilizing their natural talents to their fullest capacity, creating as much wealth and growth of business in the process as she is able.
To simplify it, assume we're on a farm. To grow and harvest produce as efficiently as possible, the farm uses a special combination fertilizer/harvester machine. It takes years of training to master one, and constant time and effort to give it proper care and maintenance.
Let's assume that sales of this magic machine are licensed by existing owners, and they only sell them to other men. Without it, a woman could probably still grow produce, but not nearly as efficiently. There currently exists the perception that women don't make good farmers, so there's no point in giving them the machine when another man could do it just as well.
That's probably not wrong in the majority of cases where a woman has no interest in investing all their energy into learning to work the machine and maintain it. But there are certainly those out there that do have the right stuff to do it. Wouldn't it make more sense to let these highly motivated women have one of these machines too? Of course, the men say that if they do that, there won't be enough farmland for the other men who have their own machines. But with more skilled workers, more farms will get made, and more produce will be grown.
In this example, the farm is the business, the produce are profits from that business, and the machine represents the skills and responsibilities that come with higher levels of management within the business. There's no finite limit on farmland beyond the time and effort it takes to cultivate it from nothing. Surely it makes sense to increase the number of people who can create as much produce as possible.
You could just as easily substitute race into this example for the same effect. It would be unthinkable 100 years ago for a black man to sit on the board of directors. In fact, did you know the date marking the first black American CEO of a fortune 500 company? 1999, believe it or not, by
Franklin Raines. By contrast, women beat that record by nearly three decades, care of
Katharine Graham in 1972.
At the end of the day, people are just people. Some are smart, some are not. Some are hard working, some are not. If someone has the skill and motivation to strive for more, be they male, female, straight, gay, black or white, those factors shouldn't affect their chances of achieving it due to biased selection methods. I don't believe mandatory ratios are the answer, but I certainly support incentivizing a change to the status quo.
Finally, to address the point that there's little evidence or fact to support my statement, I'd say the massive growth of GDP that occurred as women entered the workforce compared to remaining at home would qualify, as would
any number of studies that show the growth possible should gender inequality be improved. I'd suggest a quick Google search using the keywords
GDP,
female and
workforce as your criteria should you wish to discover the benefits of improving employment access for women.