Lack of female politicians pulls Turkey down

The lack of political representation for Turkish women is the heaviest factor dragging on Turkey’s quest for gender equality, according to a global index that puts the country in 129th place out of 134.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2009 comes as a disappointment, with Turkey falling two places compared to last year’s ranking.

For a country whose NGOs, women’s groups and government are constantly launching initiatives in an attempt to close the gap, the poor ranking shows that Turkey lags desperately behind due to its lack of political empowerment and participation of women in Parliament.

Hülya Gülbahar, the chairwoman of the Association for Educating and Supporting Women Candidates, or Ka-Der, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that she was not at all surprised by the results of the index. “Women in Turkey have become accustomed to these outcomes. We pick up the list and automatically look to find Turkey at the bottom,” she said.

Turkey deserves its poor ranking due to its low scores on political empowerment, Güler Sel, the chairwoman of the Haceteppe University Population Investigation Institution, told the Daily News. “There are developments in education, as the report shows, which should lead to more women seeking positions of authority in Parliament, but sadly, this is not the case,” she said.

Justice and Development Party, or AKP, deputy Özlem Türköne acknowledged that the gaps in gender equality in politics and Parliament are extremely high on a global scale, but noted that since 2007, the AKP has more than doubled the percentage of women in ministerial positions in Parliament, from 4 percent to 10 percent.

“I appreciate that the figures on the index appear alarming, but we must not forget that progress is being made,” Türköne told the Daily News. “As a female deputy representing the AKP, I have witnessed the work that is being done to address and improve upon this issue and I believe that Turkey’s position on such indexes will improve in the future.”

The World Economic Forum’s index looks at the gaps in gender equality, measuring the ways in which countries are distributing resources between women and men regardless of the overall level of resources in the country. The four sub-indexes used are Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.

On a scale where 0 means inequality and 1.00 signifies equality, women in Turkey are positioned at 0.35 in labor-force participation, 0.10 in Parliament positions held and at just 0.04 for the number of women in ministerial positions.

Gülbahar, who also works as a lawyer in Turkey, emphasized that unless laws are made to ensure women are given roles of equal responsibility in politics, such figures will never change. “While other Muslim countries such as Iran share gender-equality issues with Turkey, they are ranked higher on the index because there are a significant number of women who participate actively in politics and in the government,” she said.

Noting that education gaps have closed, with literary rates scoring 0.84, enrollment rates for primary schools 0.97 and enrollment in secondary and tertiary education coming at 0.86 and 0.76, respectively, Gülbahar said, “We now need to focus on gender equality education for the whole of society including the president and the prime minister.”

While Turkey sits at one of the lowest positions, the rankings of the Nordic countries demonstrate positive progress in closing gender gaps on a global scale. Iceland has claimed the top spot from Norway, which slipped to third behind Finland. Sweden, in fourth place, completed the Nordic countries’ continued dominance of the top spots.

Speaking to the Daily News, Yeşim Müftüler Seviğ, the secretary-general of the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey, or KAGİDER, suggested some areas that need to be addressed to make a difference in Turkey’s positioning on the index.

According to Seviğ and KAGİDER, steps taken to address these issues need to be made in an integrated manner and all relevant groups need to work to empower women in society, economics and politics to ensure that decisions are made on an equal gender basis. Moreover, KAGİDER believes that a budget needs to be assigned for projects and activities that aim to close gender gaps.

“The first and foremost factor is for women to be put in decision-making positions in Parliament. I cannot stress this enough,” Seviğ told the Daily News. “More and more women are being educated each day, but very few are being placed in high-ranking positions, professionally or politically.”

Until this is achieved Turkey will continue to be disappointed and embarrassed by its position on the gender-gap index, she said.