[vessenes]

And yet, women had almost no professional job possibilities in America until WW2, when we sent many men overseas and there was a cultural shift.

You’re probably right that in 1932 it would have been largely distracting / difficult for a random company to aggressively recruit female workers and source quality female executives. But, the reason would have been work norms, cultural mores, experience for women workers, and so on, not (as it turns out) that they were incapable of producing high quality results and value for corporations.

Put another way, valuing people “accurately” may well trend into some Nash equilibrium that’s far from optimal when you perturb the surrounding context.