The Role of Gender in the Turkish Parliament

• In Event: Poster Session: African Politics Conference Group; Middle East and North Africa Politics & Human Rights
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Middle East and North Africa Politics

Abstract

Existing research on women’s substantive representation in established democracies has shown that legislative behavior differs across gender. When it comes to transitioning democracies, particularly for the Muslim majority countries, however, much less is known. So far, there is comparatively little work on legislative behavior in the Parliament of Turkey (Konak Unal 2017, 2018). Konak Unal (2017,2018) analyzed the impact of gender and political identities on legislators’ policy preferences through bill initiation and speech participation in the Turkish Parliament and provided empirical evidence that there is a significant relationship between gender and legislative behavior. However, we don’t know yet whether gender has any effect on the other aspects of the legislative process such as committees and leadership roles. More needs to be known about how women are assigned and work in their legislative committees, more specifically about the participation and behavior of female legislators within committees, to which committees they tend to be assigned, their possible rotation, and their chances of becoming chairpersons. Since women are latecomers with less political, social and institutional resources, they may have less power in the committee meetings where they discuss and debate the bills. In these male dominated meetings, female legislators may not be treated as equal. It is also important to investigate whether female legislators’ have a different legislative style in their leadership positions. Another worthwhile research endeavor is to examine the legislative effectiveness of Turkish legislators, particularly gender differences in seeing legislative initiatives become laws. Does legislative effectiveness differ across gender? Are women more effective in certain topics? In the Turkish context, since the parliament has been controlled by male legislators, female legislators may be less successful than their male colleagues in getting their bills turned into law. Moreover, women’s legislative effectiveness might depend on the bills’ policy themes. Women may or may not be more effective than men at passing bills on topics of women’s specific interests (feminine issues, children and family issues, health, education etc.). Another significant element to investigate regarding legislative effectiveness is intersecting identities. Women’s legislative effectiveness may depend on partisanship, social identities and/or their intersecting identities. For instance, since AKP is the ruling party in Turkish Parliament, pious Muslim female legislators may be more effective in the legislative process than their female colleagues of the opposition parties. The present study addresses this gap by examining the impact of gender on legislative behavior and legislative effectiveness in the Turkish Parliament through committee assignments, leadership roles and parliamentary bills between 2002 and 2018.

Author

• Saadet Konak Unal, University of Houston