ABSTRACT
Debates about electoral quotas for women can be acrimonious. Not all women support them; nor do all feminists. This is the case in both older and newer democracies. At stake in these debates are the meanings of some key concepts in political analysis - equality, representation, citizenship and rights. In the first three sections of this chapter, I elaborate the ways in which these concepts relate to the quota issue, the bases of disagreements, and theoretical developments that attempt to shift the issue past some theoretical sticking points. In particular I draw attention to interventions that suggest the importance of challenging dominant norms in the concepts under consideration. In the last section on gender, I suggest that mounting these challenges reduces concerns that quotas rely upon a homogeneous category 'women', which tends to downplay the significance of the diversity of women's experiences.
