Women MPs Legislative Activities in Turkey, 2002-2015: A logit Analysis

During the recent years, the research on representational roles seems to regain its importance within the international scholarly literature. Legislative behavior is essential for the development of various representative roles. There are several studies on legislative roles of women in democratic countries. However, it is less studies that what types of legislative activities that women MPs hold and how these activities can be assessed according to which legislative roles. Therefore, in order to define the legislative behavior of women parliamentarians, it will be useful to investigate the types of their legislative activities and the scope of these activities. With the exception of the first three legislative periods following the 1935 elections (average 3%), the ratio of women MPs in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey has increased to about 4 % in 1999 and recorded at 14,9 % in 2015 Deputies’ General Elections. Independent from this minimum threshold to overcome male dominance, it is expected that as the number of women increases in the assembly, female MPs tend to focus more legislative activities dealing with women-related issues by means of forming “critical actors” in the legislative process. The major research question of this project is whether women MPs in the Turkish Parliament tend to prioritize women-related policy issues in their legislative activities. The legislative activities of women MPs on women-related topics to be coded into thematic policy categories (Jones, 1997, dependent variable) shall be explained by gender (main independent variable), seniority, legislative and party posts, constituency and party affiliation and similar (control) variables. A logit model shall be used for this analysis. Thus, the objective determinants of legislative behavior of women MPs in Turkey shall be compared with previous studies in democratic countries.