Introducing gender quotas in politics is often a difficult endeavour: quotas tend to trigger controversial debates between those who find them a necessary, just and legitimate measure to redress women's under-representation, and those who think that they are arbitrary, discriminatory, contrary to the free will of the voter or an obstacle to national cohesion. More or less explicitly, quota debates extend to issues much wider than the narrow question of women's presence in parliament: discourses on gender quotas express contrasting understandings of political justice; gender, gender identities and gender inequalities; and the role of the state with regard to social and political inequalities between women and men. More generally, quota debates can be considered as sites of struggle for the redefinition of the relation between gender, justice and the political.