Appealing to authority, e.g. Nature, simply does not work in science because no matter how authoritative you are you can be wrong. Science responds to hard data.

All the data you mention does nothing to indicate the cause. For example, if the cause is due to women being more likely to take time off to start and raise a family and then finding it very hard to get back into science again having quotas will do nothing to address that. This is why science exists: when confronted with what looks like a possible problem we investigate to find whether there is a problem and what the cause is. 

Climate change is a perfect example of this. Confronted with data showing increasing global temperatures a huge research effort was launched which has shown that we are largely the cause. If the government response had been to rely on anecdotes about warm weather do you think anyone would have changed their minds and been motivated to take action?