Gender equality policies in Turkey’s opposition municipalities: factors that impact policy-making according to gender advocates

ABSTRACT

The article explores gender equality policy processes in Turkey’s opposition-controlled municipalities faced with a national government that has an anti-gender equality stance in an authoritarian populist context. Based on interview data and documentary review, we identify four factors that facilitate and hinder gender equality policies and argue that the interaction between political party ideology and mayors’ individual perceptions creates spaces for gender mainstreaming processes in which gender experts play a key role. Gender mainstreaming plays an enabling role by improving policy capacity, diffusing gender awareness and in some cases changing politicians’ perceptions of electoral prospects; however, adversarial inter-governmental interactions hinder transformative actions although the latter carry the potential for future politicisation in feminist terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender equality
• gender mainstreaming
• gender expertise
• local equality action plans
• municipalities
• policy capacity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout the article, gender equality refers to a policy goal, i.e. gender equality in public and private life, to be achieved by using policy levers. In line with definitions of international organisations, we conceive of gender mainstreaming as a policy instrument: ‘The (re)organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policy-making’ (Council of Europe 1998, p. 12).

2. We have identified four municipal officials as gender experts, who share the following characteristics: an activist past in a women’s movement or NGO; exposure to intensive trainings especially by the Women’s Human Rights-New Solutions Association (KİH-YÇ), which focuses on training of trainers; appointment or election to a municipal senior post responsible for women’s affairs; and exposure to trainings provided by other rights-based women’s NGOs within their respective municipalities. Additionally, all gender experts interviewed for this study are considered as such by the other interviewees.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ebru Ertugal

Ebru Ertugal received her PhD in Political Science from the Catholic University of Leuven. She is currently an Associate Professor at Özyeğin University in Istanbul. Her research interests comprise topics in development policy and governance, public policy, gender equality, international and comparative political economy, and Europeanisation. She has publications on the transformation of governance and policy, institutional change, and policy learning and transfer in journals such as Regional Studies, Journal of European Integration, Policy & Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, European Political Science and South European Society and Politics. She is the co-editor of a book volume on the Europeanisation of Public Policy in Southern Europe published by Routledge and the recipient of a research grant from the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council on sustainable governance of local governments.

Itir Bagdadi

Itir Bagdadi is currently a local government advisor to local mayors regarding gender equality policies and a PhD Candidate (on leave) in the Political Science Department at the City University of New York Graduate Center currently writing her dissertation on the impact of repeat women candidates who have lost their previous election campaigns. She also works as an IB Economics Instructor at the American Collegiate Institute in Izmir. She is a former director of the Gender Studies Research Centre at a local university in Izmir where she founded the centre and held the position of director for 9 years, also serving as a lecturer in the Political Science Faculty. Her academic research interests include gender politics, gender and poverty, civil society, political candidates, local government policies, history of the women’s movement, urban memory and gender, and sex trafficking in post-Soviet politics.