That's certainly at least somewhat true. But she only brings this up when confronted with the Red Ajah gaining some back patting because of Elayne's strength, which is silly since Elayne would have gone to the Tower regardless of her potential so the Red gaining influence for her recruitment is a bit of BS. Moiraine specifically brings Egwene and Nynaeve's great potential up because she needed political advantage. Normally she wouldn't have even brought them to the Tower at all unless they were already channeling and required the training for their own safety. But since Siuan was already struggling with the Hall this could be used.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here ... we've seen stronger Sisters browbeat weaker Sisters at almost every turn. Kiruna/Bera with Merana, Cadsuane with everyone, Elayne pulls it off with the Ebu Dar Sisters ... probably a million more examples too

I disagree ... until Verin and Alanna went to the TR for their own purposes and couched it in "recruitment" all we ever hear about is how AS don't actively recruit. Even when Egwene forces the issue we still see most AS are reluctant to do more than allow women who approach them to join the Novice ranks. Even after they found Sharina and women like Nicola and the other powerful ones most AS seem to do little other than accept this situation.

Elaida is more than a little unstable so I'm not sure using her as an example is making your point ... but to your point she also essentially saved Egwene because of her strength in the Power. It's clearly something considered valuable, when discovered, but other than Cadsuane not a lot of AS seem to care much about finding any women.

I think if this was truly the case we'd see far more women in the upper levels of AS strength. Fact is the vast majority of AS are what they consider "middling" and the ranks are thinner in the top tiers of strength than at the lower spectrum. It's slightly skewed because there is a minimum strength level involved in becoming AS which IIRC RJ said eliminated roughly 1/3 of all women. So there should be a bias toward the top of the strength levels, but in reality there is a bias toward the lowest strength. Cadsuane notes this when talking about Moiraine's strength and that there should be 50 women to match her rather than 5.

I don't think it's 100% pettiness (although most AS we've seen are pretty petty), I think it's another one of those bad "customs as strong as laws". AS wait until they are approached by a woman unless she's already begun channeling. But given the political nature of the Tower, it seems likely that this "custom" was born from AS not wanting to displace themselves in the hierarchy by recruiting women who end up stronger.