"When the introduction of board gender quotas was first discussed in Italy a decade ago, those in favor of quotas relied on nonacademic results from consultancy companies claiming that a higher share of women would "lead" to substantial better performance. The arguments against gender quotas were dominated by the defense of "meritocracy", arguing that quotas contravene meritocracy because they risk promoting less qualified individuals and thus reducing the quality of board members. I was puzzled. The argument in favor was not convincing, since it was based on a simple correlation, which is different from causality. The one against was misplaced: Why do we talk about the quality of women if the quality of men has never been an issue? Moreover, since highly qualified women are abundant, why should the promotion of women reduce quality? At that time, together with some co-authors, I contributed to the production of new evidence in the political sphere, showing in a causal way (i.e., using a rigorous analysis) that the introduction of gender quotas in candidate lists increased - rather than decreased - the quality of elected politicians. The rationale for gender quotas changed: policy-makers stopped using unreliable correlations between female representation and performance to justify gender quotas and realized that gender quotas do not contravene meritocracy but rather enhance it"-- Provided by publisher.
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