Turkish women left behind as country progresses

Despite progress in some vital indicators of a healthy society, the role of women in Turkish society remains very low and the country has regressed on the U.N. Human Development Index.

Turkey ranked 101 out of 109 countries in the 2009 Gender Empowerment Measure, or GEM, released on Monday as a part of the United Nations Development Programme, or UNDP’s, Human Development Index.

Turkey dropped three places in this year’s Human Development Index, ranking 79 out of 182 countries, but the alarmingly low rank in the Gender Equality Index is a strong indicator that the country has a long way to go to empower women politically and economically in order to achieve gender equality.

The GEM bases its rankings on indicators such as the active role played by women in politics and the economy. The GEM was included in the Human Development Index for the first time in 1995.

Despite an increase in Turkey’s life expectancy rates, literacy and gross national product over the past 27 years, the country continues to be ranked low on the UNDP’s Human Development Index. When spilt into the four sections of extremely developed, developed, developing and undeveloped, Turkey falls into the category of developed with Cuba and Saudi Arabia, which are ahead of Turkey’s neighbors Armenia and Iran. But in the GEM results, Turkey is only ahead of Tonga, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh and Yemen.

“The results demonstrate that Turkey is at a stand still, there are no reforms being implemented to show development,” said Pinar İlkkaracan, coordinator of the Women’s Human Rights Foundation, in her result analysis. İlkkaracan said in the 2000s there have been significant changes to the Turkish Penal Code and development toward gender equality, but today these changes are not being taken forward. According to İlkkaracan, the issue of employment also needs to be addressed in order to progress in the area of gender equality.

President of the Association to Support and Train Women Candidates, or KADER, Hülya Gülbahar, said she was not at all surprised by the figures, and said KADER had warned political parities ahead of the local elections in March about the fact that in 39 out of 81 provinces in Turkey there was not one female member of the municipal council. “Half of Turkey is being run without any female member of council, and until this problem is solved the figures will not change,” she said.

The Human Development Index considers factors such as poverty, gender, democracy, human rights, cultural liberty, globalization, water scarcity and climate change. In the poverty index, Turkey is ranked 40 out of 135 countries, in the under 40’s mortality rate it was ranked 50, and in the literacy index it ranked 77. The lowest-ranked position for Turkey was in the gender empowerment measure.