Substantive Representation of Women in Turkish Politics: A Quantitative Analysis of Parliamentary Bills
Emel İlter, Alper Tolga BulutStudies on the representation of women usually focus on the descriptive and substantive representation of women. Early studies underlined the importance of a “critical mass”, meaning that women need to acquire a certain level of representation in the parliament, in order to be able to influence policy outcomes in their favor. Whether this ‘descriptive representation’ of women leads to ‘substantive representation’ forms another important question in the gender and politics literature. Although an increasing number of studies is exploring this question, they are heavily focused on developed Western democracies, with a few exceptions. This study investigates the substantive representation of women in a developing and Muslim majority country: Turkey. By content coding and analyzing 4500 parliamentary bills submitted to the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA), this study aims to answer the following questions: Which parties take a prominent role in terms of the substantive representation of women? How do gender and party ideology affect these outcomes? Our results have significant implications for the representation of women in Turkey as well as in the developing world.
Türk Siyasetinde Kadının Niteliksel Temsili: Meclis Faaliyetleri Üzerinden Sayısal Bir Analiz
Emel İlter, Alper Tolga BulutKadının siyasal temsili ile alakalı çalışmalar, genellikle niceliksel (Descriptive representation) ve niteliksel (Substantive Representation) temsil kavramları üzerine odaklanmakta ve kadınların politika çıktılarını kendi lehlerine etkileyebilmek için parlamentolarda “kritik bir eşiğe” ulaşmaları gerektiğini öne sürmektedir. Niceliksel temsilin niteliksel temsili sağlayıp sağlamadığı da literatürde önemli bir araştırma sorusudur. Her ne kadar artan sayıda çalışma bu soruya cevap arasa da, birkaç önemli istisna dışında, bu çalışmaların çoğu gelişmiş Batı devletleri üzerine yoğunlaşmaktadır. Bu çalışma, gelişmekte olan ve Müslüman çoğunluğa sahip bir ülke olan Türkiye’ye odaklanmaktadır. Bu bağlamda 2002-2015 yılları arasında Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (TBMM)’ne sunulan 4500 kanun teklifi sayısal içerik analizi yöntemiyle incelenmiş ve şu sorulara cevap aranmıştır: TBMM’de kadınların nitelikli temsili konusunda hangi parti/partiler ön plana çıkmaktadır? Cinsiyet ve parti ideolojisi bu süreçte nasıl bir rol oynamaktadır? Elde edilen sonuçlar özelde Türkiye’de, genelde ise gelişmekte olan ülkelerde kadının siyasal temsili ile alakalı önemli ipuçları sunmaktadır.
In order to understand political representation, one needs to grasp the different approaches in terms of its definition. More than half a century ago, Hanna Pitkin offered one of the most detailed accounts of representation, and underlined four different types of representation, each of which focuses on the different aspects of the concept (Pitkin, 1967). The first dimension reflects the symbolic representation, which refers to the represented’s feelings about whether they are being fairly and effectively represented. The second dimension is the formalistic representation, which refers to the rules and procedures regulating the selection and removal of representatives. The third dimension is the descriptive representation, which refers to the similarity between representatives and the represented. The final dimension, which is the focus of our study, is the substantive representation, which reflects the congruence between the representatives’ actions and the interests of the represented.
Based on the literature on the substantive representation of women, our study advances two main arguments. (1) Ideologically left parties (the center left CHP and left-wing HDP) will be more active in representing women’s interests in the Turkish parliament. As a result, we hypothesize that these parties will draft more bills with feminist content. (2) It is widely believed that the most responsive actors in terms of women’s substantive representation in the parliament are women legislators. Hence, we argue that female legislators are more concerned with the substantive representation of women, and hypothesize that women legislators will draft more private members’ bills compared to their male colleagues. In light of these two arguments, this study aims to analyze the substantive representation of women in the Turkish parliament by using quantitative content analysis techniques. Our study aims to make a significant contribution to the literature, both in terms of its method and its approach (determining policy priorities of individual legislators). In this respect (based on pre-determined policy areas), we have collected and content coded more than 4500 private members’ bills which were drafted by legislators from different parties in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Utilizing this unique dataset, we seek to understand which parties are more active in terms of women’s substantive representation in the Turkish parliament. We also aim to uncover whether the gender of the individual legislator has an impact on feminist bill initiation behavior.
Our results indicate that center left CHP is the most active party in terms of initiating bills with feminist content. Both female and male legislators from the CHP introduced many private members’ bills that further women’s interests. This effect is even bigger when the size of the party is taken into account. Similarly, the left-wing HDP is also quite active in representing women’s interests once we take into account the facts that they did not participate in the 22nd legislative terms and that they were the smallest party in the parliament. These findings confirm our first expectation, that compared to rightwing parties, ideologically left parties are more likely to represent women’s interests in parliament.
We also hypothesized that women legislators would be more likely to represent the interests of women, and therefore, descriptive representation would lead to substantive representation. In this respect, we expected women legislators to draft more feminist bills compared to their male colleagues. Our results present a mixed picture in this regard. The findings indicate that women legislators did not make the expected contribution to the substantive representation of women. A detailed analysis of our data shows that, with the exception of the HDP, male legislators propose more feminist bills. These findings indicate that although the number of women legislators has increased over the years, this increase in numbers did not have the expected impact on women’s substantive representation. Our results have significant implications for the substantive representation of women in Turkey.
