What Drives Women’s Substantive Representation in Muslim-Majority Countries? Lessons from Turkey

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912920948135
• Date: 01 December 2021
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

2021, Vol. 74(4) 913 –926

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920948135

Political Research Quarterly

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Introduction

What are the determinants of women’s substantive repre-

sentation in Muslim-majority countries? Although wom-

en’s equal representation is a global problem, it is more

severe in Muslim-majority countries. To illustrate, the

Inter-Parliamentary Union ranks the Middle East and

North Africa (MENA) lowest in terms of female parlia-

mentary representation. The dearth of women in elected

offices in the region has captured significant amount of

scholarly attention. Scholars studying the underrepresen-

tation of women in Muslim-majority countries usually

underline the combination of socioeconomic, cultural, and

religious factors that discourage women to run for politi-

cal office. Researchers within this vein argue that religious

norms are a powerful impediment to the improvement of

women’s rights due to high levels of religiosity in Muslim

countries (Alexander and Welzel 2011). In more religious

societies, predominant interpretations of Islam, which

emphasize traditional gender roles and encourage differ-

ent treatments of men and women, often enjoy wide legiti-

macy (Tohidi and Bayes 2001). Hence, “the cultural gulf

separating Islam from the West involves Eros far more

than Demos” (Norris and Inglehart 2002, 236).

Others, however, highlighted the role of different fac-

tors such as patriarchy (Joseph 2000; Moghadam 2003),

institutions (Benstead 2016; Bishin and Cherif 2017;

Bush and Gao 2017; Hughes et al. 2019; Kang 2015;

Shalaby 2016), gender stereotypes (Benstead, Jamal, and

Lust 2015), and economic structure (Ross 2008). This

study builds on and complements these existing perspec-

tives on women’s representation in predominantly Islamic

societies.

Although these studies made crucial contributions to

our understanding of women’s political representation in

Muslim-majority countries, they largely focus on individ-

ual-level support for gender equality or the descriptive

representation of Muslim women. Hence, whether

increasing number of women legislators in Muslim-

majority countries make a difference in policy remains

largely understudied (Shalaby 2018). This contribution is

particularly significant given the current dearth of quanti-

tative work on the mechanisms of women’s substantive

representation in the MENA region—a research effort

often stymied by a lack of reliable data. This paper aims

948135PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920948135Political Research QuarterlyBulut

research-article2020

1Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey

Corresponding Author:

Alper T. Bulut, Department of International Relations, Karadeniz

Technical University, KTU-IIBF No. 210, Trabzon 61080, Turkey.

Email: atbulut@ktu.edu.tr

What Drives Women’s Substantive

Representation in Muslim-Majority

Countries? Lessons from Turkey

Alper T. Bulut1

Abstract

Although a voluminous literature has studied the substantive representation of women, these studies have largely

been confined to advanced democracies. Similarly, studies that focus on the relationship between Islam and women’s

rights largely ignored the substantive representation of women in Muslim-majority countries. As one of the first

studies of its kind, this article investigates the role of religion in the substantive representation of women by focusing

on a Muslim-majority country: Turkey. Using a novel data set of 4,700 content coded private members’ bills (PMBs)

drafted in the Turkish parliament between 2002 and 2015, this article synthesizes competing explanations of women’s

representation in the Middle East and rigorously tests the implications of religion, ideology, critical mass, and labor

force participation accounts. The results have significant implications for the study of gender and politics in Muslim-

majority countries.

Keywords

gender, substantive representation, religion, AKP, Turkey

Article