More than one quarter of the 249 seats in Afghanistan’s National Assembly are reserved for women, placing it among the world’s top 20 most gender-balanced legislatures. According to a new report from the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, however, this creation of political space for women has not resulted in the substantive representation of their collective gender interests. The report, titled “A Matter of Interests: Gender and the Politics of Presence in the Wolesi Jirga”, argues that the representation of women’s gender interests in the National Assembly remains minimal.