The selection of Candidates in Closed Lists Systems: Gender and Political experience in Turkish Elections

Despite an increasing trend over recent years, women’s representation in parliament did not even reach 20 percent in Turkey. The underrepresentation of women persists even though the elections are held with a closed-list proportional representation system, which is associated with higher women representation in the literature. In this article, we shift the focus from electoral institutions to candidate selection to explain women’s underrepresentation. Using an original dataset of candidates in 8 elections (from the 2002 election to 2023) and 28900 candidates, we study the impact of gender in addition to various candidate qualifications on the rank position of candidates in their party lists. We also analyze whether the impact of candidate qualifications differ for women and men candidates. Preliminary findings show that women are less likely to get promising ranks in the party lists, controlling for their occupation and education as well as their electoral, legislative, and local experience. Being a local candidate and having electoral experience increases the likelihood of getting promising ranks and the positive effect of these variables is higher for women candidates.