The first time I heard a Somali female parliamentarian describe her experience of the quota system, she did not use the word “opportunity.” She used the word “chess piece.” “They give us seats,” she told me, “but silence our votes.” I was in the middle of four years of doctoral research on women’s political participation in post-conflict Somalia, interviewing women politicians, clan elders, civil society leaders, and international programme officers. That sentence, eight words, captured somethin