One of the sticks used to beat gender quotas with is the argument of meritocracy. This is being repeated time and again; the use of gender quotas in Ireland and the appointment of a gender-balanced cabinet in Canada are two recent examples. The argument is underpinned by three fundamental assumptions. The first is that recruitment without gender quotas is meritocratic. The second is that there is a clear, objective definition of meritocracy in political recruitment. And the third is that gender is an inherently unmeritocratic criterion for political representation. I argue that none of these assumptions is true, and hence that the argument is fundamentally flawed.
