The Washington Post, 04.11.2015 | Jeff Guo

„In March, Germany became the latest country to instate boardroom quotas. (…) But even supporters of women’s equality questioned if the new law was a good idea. (…) new research into the roots of gender inequality has suggested a surprising argument for giving women an artificial boost. Experiments show that policies like quotas can draw out a substantial number of qualified, but otherwise shy women who would never have put their name in the hat. (…) ‘There’s this false assumption that affirmative action rules keep the applicant pool the same,’ says Matthias Sutter, an economics professor at the University of Cologne, who has studied this phenomenon in lab experiments. ‘(…) we find that quotas really create new incentives for high performing women to enter. They change the set of applicants. They draw in the best performing women.’”

Link to article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/04/heres-a-simple-way-to-get-more-talented-women-into-top-jobs/