Obviously, if you implement a quota, the representation will rise. That says nothing about the side effects, or even the motivation of women to aim for higher c

Obviously, if you implement a quota, the representation will rise. That says nothing about the side effects, or even the motivation of women to aim for higher careers in general. As for the research showing higher profitability for diverse teams: a lot if it is about diversity of thought, not diversity of genders. But even if you take gender into account, you have to also consider economic trends. Businesses that flourish might simply be more able to afford women (who are more costly employees than men, if only because of the sick days and higher likelihood to drop out because of pregnancy). So the correlation would actually be inverse (success would cause more female employees, not the other way round). Or think about oil industry vs tech industry. Fewer women work in mining, but the tech industry was exceptionally successful in recent years. It might just be a random artifact that more women work in tech than in mining, and tech happened to be more successful. If you look at such papers, always pay attention to the interval they use for claiming "more success". If they say "from 2009 to 2016 diverse companies were more successful", bet you ass that if you look at the data from 2000 to 2018, the correlation fades away.