Or perhaps the Ferengi aren't as Big Brother as you're making them sound here, or Ishka bribed people to look in the other direction.
Nothing about the whole "Ferengi females" thing makes sense.
* Quark/Lumba's argument about females as consumers should have ensured that they were able to do business centuries ago. Why would any sane Ferengi ignore billions of potential customers?
* If females cannot learn to read or do business, how can they teach their sons to do so?
* If females aren't allowed to learn the Rules of Acquisition, why are they quoted so openly?
* If females can't do business, what point would Quark's stipend to Ishka serve?
* Would one businessman out of hundreds really be enough to stop Brunt's coup?
* If Ferengi females are truly as capable of doing business as males, why did Quark have to masquerade as one?
* If all it took to take females all the way from chattel to full equals was one woman banging the Grand Nagus, how is it that it never happened before?
* Consider that it took American women 140 years just to get the vote, should we believe that Ferengi women made ten times the progress in under seven? Riker reminded us earlier that equality comes through evolution.
* And wouldn't a change of that nature create so much chaos that it would destabilize the entire alliance, which is not a small area? There's no evidence of this happening.