Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ISTANBUL UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCES-SIYASAL BILGILER FAKULTESI DERGISI, cilt.29, sa.1, ss.165-188, 2020 (ESCI)
Studies 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.