> If you're a company that people have heard of paying the kind of wages companies people have heard of pay, you could absolutely achieve 50/50 gender balance without compromising on quality.

I already acknowledged this possibility, but pointed out that it leads to skewed incentives, fast turnover and unqualified hires.

You'd have to start hiring candidates for reasons other than qualifications, or offering pay significantly above market rate for only that gender. This strategy would also make poaching women attractive, thus driving fast turnover and further wage inflation. This demand/wage inflation would then attract plenty of far less qualified women, thus diluting the talent pool, but the skewed incentives simply can't filter out these candidates. I don't see how this would be sustainable if gender parity were viewed as desirable in and of itself, without regard for the overall economics of the business.

Practically, do you really think achieving gender parity would yield such a huge competitive advantage that these factors can be completely ignored? I think we'd have seen something like that by now, but women's pay is still roughly on par with men's in STEM, so clearly gender parity isn't economically viewed as the huge advantage you portray it to be.