![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The gender gap in national and local politics is an important problem in numerous countries. Two explanations for the deficit experienced by female politicians relate to demand for women’s representation by political parties and by voters. We argue that the gender gap stems from party-based limitations in local politics. Women do not compete in local politics because relevant parties do not nominate them. We present original data on mayoral candidates who ran in the 2009 and 2014 Turkish local elections. Our findings show that women are less likely to be nominated for office and reasons for this gap originate from party choices rather than lack of electoral support for women.
Acknowledgements
We would like to extend our gratitude to Sabancı University’s Gender and Women’s Studies Center (SUGENDER) for awarding this paper the Dicle Koğacıoğlu award in 2016. We would also like to thank conveners and participants of the 2015 Sabancı University Political Science Department brownbag seminars, 2016 ESPA İzmir Workshop and 2017 MPSA panel ‘Gender Gaps across Political Contexts.’ We would also like to thank Işık Özel, Kerim Can Kavaklı and Kimberly Guiler for their valuable comments.
Notes on contributors
Kerem Yıldırım is a visiting assistant professor at Sabancı University. He obtained his PhD in Political Science from Koç University in 2016 after completing a visiting scholar position at Duke University during 2015–2016. He is currently working on a book project based on his dissertation entitled ‘Continuous Clientelism: Persuasion and Preference Change in Turkey.’ His research interests include political behavior, party politics, politics of redistribution, Turkish politics, and Middle Eastern studies. His research has been published in journals such as South European Society and Politics and the International Journal of Press/Politics.
Gülnur Kocapınar is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Sabancı University. Her research focus on party politics, elite recruitment, political party organizations, legislative politics and Turkish politics. Her co-authored articles have appeared in Party Politics and Parliamentary Affairs.
Notes
1. Kunovich and Paxton, “Pathways to Power,” 505.
2. Lovenduski, Feminizing Politics.
3. Kittilson, “Representing Women,” and Schwindt-Bayer, Political Power.
4. Groot, “Women Political Leaders, ” and Bauer, “Untangling the Relationship.”
5. Rallings, Thrasher, and Shears, “The 2008 Survey,” 3–4.
6. Turan, Local Elections in Turkey, 324.
7. Examples include Hazan and Voerman, “Electoral Systems.”; Alexander, “Change in Women’s Descriptive Representation.”; and Koyuncu Lorasdağı and Sumbas, “Discussing Women’s Representation.”
8. Lovenduski, Feminizing Politics, and Mazur and Pollack, “Gender and Public Policy.”
9. Weldon, “Beyond Bodies.”
10. Koyuncu Lorasdağı and Sumbas, “Contemplating Local Politics in Turkey,” and Koyuncu Lorasdağı and Sumbas, “Discussing Women’s Representation.”
11. Examples include Norris and Lovenduski, Political Recruitment, Fox and Lawless, “If Only They’d Ask”; Schneider, “The Effects of Gender-Bending.”; and Ashe, “Women’s Legislative Underrepresentation.”
12. Darcy, Welch, and Clark, Women, Elections, and Representation.
13. Fulton et al., “The Sense of a Woman.”
14. Lawless and Fox, It Still Takes a Candidate.
15. Lovenduski, Feminizing Politics, and Kenny and Verge, “Opening Up the Black Box.”
16. Norris and Lovenduski, Political Recruitment, suggest supply and demand side explanations for party and voter-based explanations respectively. However, Fox and Lawless, “If Only They’d Ask,” refer to political ambition as a supply-side factor that hinders women’s representation. To prevent conceptual stretching, we refer to party and voter based explanations of gender gap.
17. Lundell, “Determinants of Candidate Selection”; Rahat, “Candidate Selection”; Cross and Blais, “Who Selects the Party Leader?”; Shomer, “What Affects Candidate Selection?”; Spies and Kaiser, “Does the Mode of Candidate Selection Affect?”; Kernell, “Party Nomination Rules”; and Hennings and Urbatsch, “There Can Be Only One.”
18. Hazan and Rahat, “The Influence of Candidate Selection.”
19. Rallings, Thrasher, and Shears, “The 2008 Survey.”
20. Hazan and Rahat, “The Influence of Candidate Selection”; Rahat, “Candidate Selection”; and Indriðason and Kristinsson, “Primary Consequences.”
21. Rahat, “Candidate Selection.”
22. Cross and Blais, “Who Selects the Party Leader?”
23. Marsh, “Localism, Candidate Selection”; Ballington, “Strengthening Internal Political Party”; Rallings, Thrasher, and Shears, “The 2008 Survey”; and Ban, Llaudet, and Snyder, “Challenger Quality.”
24. Huddy and Terkildsen, “Gender Stereotypes”; Herrnson, Lay, and Stokes, “Women Running ‘as Women’”; Schneider, “The Effects of Gender-Bending”; and Bauer, “Untangling the Relationship.”
25. Schneider, “The Effects of Gender-Bending,” 55.
26. Huddy and Terkildsen, “Gender Stereotypes,” and Kittilson and Fridkin, “Gender, Candidate Portrayals.”
27. Hazan and Rahat, “Candidate Selection.”
28. Coşar and Yeğenoğlu, “New Grounds for Patriarchy in Turkey.”
29. Vallance, “Women Candidates,” and Norris and Lovenduski, “If Only More Candidates Came Forward.”
30. Lee, “The Electoral Advantage,” and Trounstine, “Evidence of a Local Incumbency Advantage.”
31. Shair-Rosenfield and Hinojosa, “Does Female Incumbency Reduce?”
32. Sayarı, “Political Parties.”
33. Özbudun, Political Parties [Siyasal Partiler]; Hale, “Democracy and the Party System”; Ayan Musil, “Authoritarian Party Structures.”
34. Hazan and Rahat, “Candidate Selection.”
35. Salmond, “Proportional Representation.”
36. For compulsory and voluntary gender quotas implemented in various countries, see the official webpage of Quota Project: http://www.quotaproject.org/country.cfm.
37. Yılmaz, “Türkiye Değerler Atlası 2012 [Turkey’s Value Atlas 2012].”
38. Göksel, “Female Labor Force Participation.”
39. Alkan, “Gendered Structures of Local Politics in Turkey,” 31.
40. Çarkoğlu and Toprak, Religion, Society, and Politics in Turkey [Türkiye’de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset]; Uysal and Topak, Partisans [Particiler]; and Çıtak and Tür, “Women between Tradition and Change.”
41. Phillips, Engendering Democracy; Ballington, “Strengthening Internal Political Party Democracy”; and O’Neill and Stewart, “Gender and Political Party Leadership in Canada.”
42. See the infographic at Inter-Parliamentary Union’s web page (Date of Access, 3 January 2018): https://goo.gl/DU8EUA.
43. ISCO-88 is an ordinal coding that ranges from 1110 to 9211 in which lower levels indicate higher status professions. To make this measure more interpretable, we reversed the order and standardized the variable so that lowest values indicate lowest status professions and highest values indicate highest status and one point increase in the status indicates a one point standard deviation increase from the mean professional status. Replicating our analyses without standardisation does not change the results.
44. Ayan Musil, “Emergence of a Dominant Party System”; Çınar, “Local Determinants”; and Esen and Gümüşçü, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism.”
45. Categories in TUIK and the years of schooling we assigned to different categories were: Illiterate (0 years of schooling), Literate but no schooling (0) Elementary (5) Elementary and Middle School (8), High School (11), Undergraduate (15), Graduate (17) and PhD (21).
46. For a similar model that studies how parties and gender together shape policy attitudes, see Barnes and Cassese, “American Party Women.”
47. Dolan, Voting for Women, and Lawless and Fox, It Still Takes a Candidate.
48. Kunovich and Paxton, “Pathways to Power,” 507.
49. İncioğlu, “Local Elections and Electoral Behavior.”
50. Yıldırım, “Anti-Political Experiences,” 541.
51. Çıtak and Tür, “Women between Tradition and Change.”
52. Carroll, “Political Elites,” and Bernstein, “Why Are There so Few Women?”
53. In 2009 elections, we considered the Democratic Society Party (DTP) as HDP’s predecessor. The DTP was banned by the Constitutional Court in December 2009, approximately 9 months after the local elections and the party was succeeded by HDP.
54. Ashe, “Women’s Legislative Underrepresentation,” 597.
55. Shair-Rosenfield and Hinojosa, “Does Female Incumbency Reduce Gender,” 847.
56. Norris and Lovenduski, Political Recruitment and Lovenduski, “The Supply and Demand Model.”
57. Arbour, Candidate-Centered Campaigns.
58. Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell, “New Institutionalism.”