This is well understood in the middle-east. Within a company or a government office, the bureaucratic wild goose-chase stops the moment you're sent to a woman's desk. They just get it done.

It's even a signal nowadays. Companies with women in mid to upper management positions are signaling they're not corrupt, and they're all about efficiency and quality of work.

At least in the Gulf, if you want it done, put an Arab woman in charge.

Great article. Actually, you can do the same right here at home by hiring minorities, disabled employees, and people who would otherwise not find work. Many of them will be more motivated than the average employee and you also do society a service by doing what most employers still don't.

If I wanted to be sexist, I would say: that should work here. If there's a glass ceiling, then corporations that don't have it should out-compete those that do, because they'll be drawing from a bigger talent pool.

So the conclusion would be that either 1) this isn't being tried, 2) it's still in the process of succeeding, such that discrimination hasn't been competed out of the market, or 3) there really is a gap in worker value, due to maternity or other gender-related issues, and the market recognizes it.

Rebuttals?

In 1996 I helped startup a branch of a company in Seoul. We had a number of help wanted ads for office staff that got a lukewarm response until we put the phrase "married women welcome to apply". Seemingly overnight we got very talented applicants who became the backbone of the office and of the company as we opened more offices in country.

It seems like this article is trying too hard to justify something that actually has a pretty easy explanation: if women are under-hired relative to their skill level, then a skilled woman is cheaper to hire than an equally skilled man.

It may be OT, but it made me think of something:

Inequality of opportunity is part of what made the U.S. a 20th century powerhouse. Bright, educated women had two career choices pre-1965: nursing or teaching. (Even in 1960, the state school my mom went to did not accept women into engineering or architecture and she could only take higher science classes if she planned to teach.) All those bright women with no options boosted our educational system to great heights for little cost. Once they had choices, many women spread out into other better paying fields.

It's not surprising that a business could succeed by following the same blueprint.

Intuitively, this makes sense. If your company has walled itself off from hiring 1/2 of the population, of course you will be passing over some highly skilled applicants who are in the sector you've walled yourself off from. By broadening your search, you will get a larger pool of talented applicants.

Free market forces can definitely spure society towards equality and human rights. Unfortunately, there is a clear point (i.e. China) where business interests take over. So while I'm certainly happy that business interests and are aligned in this case, it certainly isn't the norm. The only example I'm aware of where a business fell clearly on the side of equality and human rights at the cost of business was when Google pulled out of China.

Some executives interviewed for the study worried that this bias would hurt their business

I'm sure they did.

The fact that it was multi-nationals doing the hiring is I think an important factor. "Foreigners" are often expected to behave eccentrically, and if they are hiring women managers, oh well. I think a native company doing the same thing would face a more uphill battle.

Still, very heartening, and perhaps enough to start a snowball effect in some countries.

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A corollary: hiring older developers would have a distinct competitive advantage.

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