Why don’t they just have the cadetship only open to people who identify as being female and guarantee them a FO job with one of the subsidiaries when they finish the course ? The cadetships should be fee free for anyone that identifies as being female. Hopefully they are correctly counting all pilots that identify as female as being female.
The ex-cadets after being employed with QF subsidiaries for a little while would meet the mainline minimums quickly, and should have the leg up.with the QF mainline training with the exceptional level of training/experience gained. The policy should be every female pilot that meets the minimum requirements goes directly into the hold pool, they already work for a QF subsidiary, they already meet the QF standard. No need for a interview process.
They could easily build this up to over 200 pilots that identify themselves as female a year. The regionals and subsidiaries can remain at a higher male percentage on lower wages and mainline female percentage can go up to be a world leader in just a few years.