At the point where 80% of the board room is men, you have to assume qualified women are being passed up at some point and it's not a meritocracy. Additionally, less-qualified men are being promoted over more-qualified women. This is bad for businesses and corporations. If the status-quo was a perfect meritocracy, then we would expect to see (on average) a 50/50 male/female make up of every board room (I am obviously starting with the premise that your sex doesn't affect your ability to lead a company). But we don't see that, so we have to assume that something is going on somewhere in the system that ultimately produces the over-representation of men in the board room.

By forcing companies to promote more women, we are forcing companies to figure out what is preventing them from promoting qualified women. It wouldn't be forcing them to choose worse candidates, and it would be stupid of them to do so (note that in the status quo, they are already passing up better female candidates for worse male candidates). It would be forcing them to make the effort to find those qualified women, and if they have to change the culture of the company to make it easier to find those women, then that is a good thing.

Another thing to consider is that our society puts different pressures on men and women, steering them towards different career choices. There is a lot of pressure for women to choose "safe" career paths (how many women drop out of college to run a start-up company?), to go into careers that are already dominated by women, and occasionally to choose between having a family and having the career they want. By requiring quotas in the board room, women can feel that their sex will less likely be a handicap as they pursue their career goals. Thus, those pressures society places on women will be lessened. It is true that because of these pressures, the pool of women to choose from is smaller. That is why Germany only imposed a 30% requirement. Hardly onerous.

So to sum it up, in my view we don't live in a meritocracy right now, because a meritocracy would produce closer to a 50/50 representation of men and women in the board room. You and I both agree that we want a meritocracy, and I think Germany's 30% requirement brings us closer to that goal.

Lastly, I think you and I have a different definition of what feminism is. To me, feminism isn't represented by extremists, aka "man-haters." For me, feminism means "men and women are equal" and that's it. So I'm a feminist.