Not so long ago an Austrian institution posted a job ad titled "Assistant Professor Position (Tenure Track) for a female Researcher". The description says further
As part of a special measure towards increasing female employment in scientific positions and promoting young researchers, the Faculty of [censored department] at the [censored institution name] invites applications for an Assistant Professor position (tenure track) for women expected to begin on May 2, 2018.
My understanding is that it is unlawful to ask for a particular gender in a job ad unless the gender is strictly necessary to perform the job duties. For academic tasks, the gender of the researcher is irrelevant. Does the institution run into legal issues with this ad? Could someone legally generate profit from such an ad by suing the institution (or the goverment behind it) for discrimination? Have such attempts been already undertaken in academia? (Outside academia, we see successful lawsuits at least in Germany.)
An aside: Hey, we all agree that in some fields there is a widespread opinion that they would profit from hiring people of the underrepresented gender; we also agree that gender issues exist before hiring, during hiring, and after hiring: they are way too numerous to discuss here. (An example: I see women underrepresented both in my research field and as sewer machine drivers. Why on earth is the politics caring about the first category but not about the second; after all, in an average town, there are way more sewer cars than academic research positions. Another example: my prior boss was an excellent first-class female researcher, but she never ever hired women herself. I could continue with the list ...) So, let us cut short and speak only about the legal and financial part of the particular situation rather than anything else. Let us not discuss whether the job ad and the institution should be condemned or praised or anything of the kind.
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