Political Quota for Women and Gender- equitable Policies in Bangladesh Tahsina Akbar 1 Abstract Ensuring women’s participation in the parliament has been an important part of the women’s movement around the world. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number 3 further highlighted the significance of quota for women in the parliament to increase their average proportion. However, it has been a long- standing debate whether political quota for women helps promote more gender-equitable policies. This article intends to explore this critical question by discussing the quota system in Bangladesh and the translation of gender-equitable policies as an outcome. It uses the feminist institutionalism framework to analyse the national level political and social institutions. The article also discusses why increasing women’s representation in the political arena alone (through quota system) does not automatically ensure gender-equitable policies; rather this transformation requires a combination of several policies. Keywords Political quota, equitable policy, feminist institutionalism framework, Bangladesh Introduction On 18 April 2017, Maryland State failed for the ninth time to pass a bill that would take away the parental right from a rapist when an all-male negotiating committee failed to convince the state’s general assembly (Trimble, 2017). While political quota, due to its imposing feature of being inexpensive, measurable and most importantly visible, has become a widely popular mechanism to increase women’s representation in politics, such events as ‘Maryland’ raise the question whether political quota for women really promotes gender-equitable policies. This article ANTYAJAA: Indian Journal of Women and Social Change 3(1) 36–48 © 2018 SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/2455632718778377 http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jws 1 Independent Researcher, Mirpur DOHS, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Corresponding author: Tahsina Akbar, Independent Researcher, Mirpur DOHS, Dhaka 1216, Bangladesh. E-mail: tahsina.akbar@gmail.com Article