Gender quota law in Belgium clearly not digested yet

I participated to the round table "Gender Quotas in Company Boards: solution or problem", organized by Guberna, Belgian insitute for directors, and the University og Ghent.

After an overview of initiatives and law passed in different European countries by Claire Bury, 3 men talked passionately about why gender quotas are unwanted, unnecessary and illegal.

Interestingly, no women were invited to speak, and all speakers were against gender quota.
Philippe Lambrecht (VBO) started by arguing against the gender quota law, mainly from an ideological perspective: government shouldn't intervene in private company matters, and should put faith and trust in the self regulating capacity of companies. He described the gender quota law as a left wing law.
Hans De Wulf (University Ghent) continued on this idea with an overview of research published on the economical benefits of having a gender balanced board. Surprisingly (or not?), he managed to favour those studies supporting his conviction that board diversity really isn't such a good thing for companies, and wiped studies suggesting otherwise under the carpet. I was particularly amused by his remark on the studies published by Catalyst: according to this professor, Catalyst is a lobbying organisation that doesn't support its findings with hard facts and insights on the methodologies used. A simple glance at www.catalyst.org will tell you otherwise.
Finally, Marc De Vos (Itinera) got very excited in arguing why gender quota law is in fact discrimination and as such unwanted and unnecessary.

What appeared to be a round tabel discussion, ended up being a 2 hour monologue against gender quota, organised by Guberna.

One woman CEO sitting next to me said "I think I'm in the wrong meeting here".

I was thinking "if the energy these guys built up in fighting the quota law would be used to actively get more diversity on boards, we would'nt need such a law."
A missed opportunity.