American startups are at least more tacit about it. Young, attractive women are heavily favored as recruiters and office managers. Honestly, as a new tech worker, I don't really mind. It is refreshing.
Yeah, I did a group interview at a San Diego startup that was like that. 90% of the developers were male, but 90% of the recruiters were young, attractive women with no background in tech. We didn't meet them face-to-face until we'd been flown out to San Diego, so it wasn't even about piquing people's interest to get them to the interview. Best I can figure is "male nerds are more likely to accept our laughably low salary offer if they think they might get to be near cute girls." It was really creepy.
> It is refreshing.
"Refreshing" in what way?
I can only speak from the perspective of the IT market in my own region, but whenever a company hires more females (including but not exclusive to the young, attractive ones) it was a really change for the better in every regard.
When surrounded by more females in offices men are better groomed, behave more professionally, and since they now have a much more complete social surrounding they are under less stress. Productivity might seem to suffer on the surface (chatting up and banter) but in reality it usually improves as a consequence of all these mentioned factors.
Pretty sure the same would happen in a, say, administrative office, accountant shop or medical practice that was all female after you'd get a few more guys in there.
Attractiveness of the persons of the other sex also plays a role, despite it not being a popular thing to say, so if the company can pull it of and maintain the same business value of such a hire it's prudent to do so.