Sure, I would agree if by "quota" you mean quota in hires. I agree that the hiring decision should be based on some "ideal of meritocracy" (with the caveat you should be careful about bias). However, putting a quota like "there should be at least one woman among the interviewees" seems perfectly reasonable and has proven to improve both performance and diversity (a great example is the last UN secretary's policy). Basically, if you ensure that you are not excluding people at the interview stage (which regrettably is very much the status quo), you do get both great hires and (accidentally) diversity.
What happens when you don’t get any women CVs passed from the recruiters for that opening? Do you wait? Do you mandate recruiters to forward a woman’s CV regarding of qualifications? There are a lot of very fine lines to walk here without a clear good answer for any.
