I wouldn't give up qualifications for gender. There's an irony in that: you don't need to do that. There are plenty of qualified women in the marketplace. You may have to look a little more broadly than business schools or former CEOs, because fewer than 5% of CEOs are women. Therefore, if the criterion is that you must have been a CEO of a public company, you're not going to find many women.
What about a president of a hospital? What about a president of a university? What about a president of a cultural organization? These people have tremendous experience and qualifications. I would venture to say that they have equal or better qualifications than some of the men. At three out of nine, you had achieved that magic 30%, and so you theoretically should have been seeing the benefits of that. You could have had more benefits if you had gone closer to 50%.