Our research explores whether the presence and influence of political dynasties neutralizes the effects of gender quotas in the Middle East and North Africa. Daniel Smith’s research (2018) reveals that female politicians are much more likely to have dynastic backgrounds than men in OECD states. The likelihood of this being the case is increased in countries of the Global South, many of which tend toward dynastic or proto-dynastic rule. In this paper, we argue that the more women from political dynasties running for office—even with gender quotas facilitating their entry into politics—the less likely there is to be an overall shift in policies meant to benefit women. In this way, dynasties mitigate the potential revolutionary effect of gender quotas and affect the types of women likely to run using them. We evaluate this hypothesis by replicating Smith’s statistical analysis with a new dataset from the MENA.