ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the idea of meritocracy and the particular romance with this idea in the US. Faith in meritocracy obscures the root problems of gender and the racial inequality, leaving quotas to look like unfair departures from meritocracy rather than remedies intended to restore meritocracy. Meritocracy is more than a descriptor of a type of distributive and governance system. It is an ideology that is invoked politically in arguments about whether redistribution is or is not warranted. Deep cultural analyses can uncover the conditions for increasing women's numbers, while stopping short of creating needed mechanisms for sustaining and measuring results and actually increasing numbers. The political tensions surrounding quotas and affirmative action have spurred not just backlash but new approaches, but these new approaches must continually be accessed through the original aims of quotas: increasing numbers, access, opportunity and quality of life.
