> If women need this special advantage, we only have to find a few other deserving minorities (race, religion and age seem like reasonable choices) before it is illegal to use merit as the first criteria for making up a corporate board.

Adding other categories is actually worse than that, because it creates the need to specifically appoint an asian catholic female age 35-49. An asian catholic female in the 50-74 age group is no good because then the younger age group is underrepresented, a hispanic catholic female in the 35-49 age group is no good because then asians are underrepresented, etc. So the last board member not only can't be chosen on merit, they basically have to be ordered from a catalog of people whose function is to fit into whatever weird shaped box is formed by the composition of the existing board members. And if anyone leaves they either have to be replaced by someone of the same gender, race, religion and age or you have to discharge other existing board members and reconstitute the board.