Democratic Backsliding and Women’s Empowerment in Turkey: Competing Political Discourses on Employment

This study examines how democratic backsliding shapes the evolution of gender equality discourses by analyzing women’s employment policy debates in Turkey, an upper-middle-income country experiencing significant democratic backsliding over the last decade. This article employs a systematic thematic analysis of parliamentary debates to trace how democratic backsliding has influenced competing discourses around women’s employment. The analysis identifies two major themes central to the feminist political economy literature: i) the perception of motherhood and ii) the regulation of care work, both pivotal in shaping women’s employment opportunities and broader empowerment. Drawing on an original dataset of parliamentary records, this study examines how these themes evolve differently for the incumbent and opposition parties over time. The resulting findings illuminate not only the evolution of discursive strategies of the incumbent regime but also reveal how opposition parties adapt or contest them within the shifting democratic landscape. By situating women’s employment at the nexus between democratic backsliding and feminist political economy, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of how democratic erosion affects both the policy agenda and political discourse around gender equality.