For decades it seemed that women’s representation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) had permanently fallen behind other world regions. Today the picture is rapidly changing in the Maghreb, which includes Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Women today hold on average 27% of legislative seats in the Maghreb compared with an average of 10% in the rest of the MENA countries. These rates are surprising, given that general attitudes towards women’s rights and leadership remain relatively conservative. This paper asks: 1) What accounts for the increase in women’s legislative representation through the adoption of quotas at the national and local levels in the Maghreb in recent years compared to other regions? 2) Why have we seen these developments, particularly in the Maghreb, and to a much lesser extent in other MENA countries? It also explores how these developments challenge existing explanations for female representation that have been developed crossnationally regarding the role of oil rents, culture, religion, and kinship ties to the state, the role of unified legal structures, among others. The paper is part of a research project I am currently conducting in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, involving in-depth interviews and content analysis of newspapers.