The Legislative Effectiveness of Women in Turkey’s Parliament

• In Event: Class, Gender and Legislative Behavior in Comparative Environments

Abstract

Although marginalization of women in legislative institutions is a global problem, it is more severe in Muslim-majority countries. The Inter-Parliamentary Union ranks the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) lowest in terms of women’s representation in parliament. Scholars studying female political empowerment in the MENA region tend to focus on individual-level support for gender equality or the descriptive representation of women. Prior studies demonstrate that women are regularly marginalized in parliament, which affects their access to leadership positions, assignment to influential committees, and their inclination to legislate on certain topics. However, much less is known about how the marginalization of women in the parliamentary arena impacts their legislative effectiveness. Focusing on Turkey, this study contributes to filling this lacuna. Using a novel data set of 6,700 content coded private members’ bills drafted in the Turkish parliament between 2002 and 2018, this paper aims to test the direct effects of gender as well as its indirect effects through assignments to positions of power. This study provides one of the first systematic studies of legislative effectiveness in Turkey and discusses its implications for the study of gender and politics in Muslim-majority countries.

Authors

• Saadet Konak Unal, University of Houston

• Eduardo Aleman, University of Houston