Why are women hugely under-represented in parliaments across the world? What strategies can bring women’s interests into the policy-making process? What are the pros and cons of quotas reserving parliamentary places for women? How can participants in women’s movements avoid being co-opted? A paper from the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) takes a look at a subject largely ignored in the mainstream literature on democratisation. It notes the contrast between the lively debates on the reform of governments in ethnically segmented societies with the deafening silence on women’s absence from the world of institutional politics.