Mid Sweden University

This study examines the link between women’s representation in national parliaments and their possibility to participate in civil society. Utilizing panel data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, covering 1975–2019, we investigate how the presence of women in parliaments influences the possibility for women to participate in civil society, especially in non-liberal democratic settings. The results indicate a positive association post-1990, coinciding with an international emphasis on civil society and a rise in women’s parliamentary representation in both liberal democracies and autocratic regimes. The study however highlights that in hybrid and autocratic regimes, increased female representation can also be used to project a gender-equal image without genuine democratization intentions. These findings suggest a correlation between the increase in women in parliaments and greater opportunities for their participation in civil society, but do not imply that the results reflect processes towards democracy. The findings contribute to understanding women’s possibilities in non-democratic regimes and underscores the need for further qualitative analysis to fully grasp the implications of these trends.

Hybrid regimes combine elements of both democratic and authoritarian governance, with potentially flawed democratic processes, suppressed civil liberties and uneven political playing fields. Increasingly, scholarship signals the longevity and resilience of hybrid regimes, especially within broader discourses on rising authoritarianism and democratic decline around the world. The lack of gender perspectives in hybrid regimes research is notable. This oversight largely neglects women's roles and their impact in such regimes and fails to focus on the potential implications these regimes may have on women's opportunities for effective participation. However, recent research has increasingly highlighted the gendered aspects of policymaking in hybrid regimes, such as shrinking and changing civic space and democratic backsliding. Moreover, women also face challenges in hybrid regimes that are tied to contested norms and less access to important social networks.This dissertation explores women's political participation (WPP) in hybrid regimes. It proposes a framework that conceptualizes WPP as occurring in two interconnected dimensions, civil society and formal political institutions. Therefore, it draws on three previous and emerging research fields: feminist institutionalism (FI), women's organizing research, and gender and democratization research. Each of these perspectives solely and taken together provide entry points to conceptualize the mechanisms that illustrate how women participate in and across both dimensions – despite and because of the challenges to WPP experienced in hybrid regimes. The dissertation asks the following research questions: first, what is the association between women's political participation in formal institutions such as parliaments and civil society across different hybrid regimes and over time? Second, what opportunities for political participation in formal political institutions and civil society do women perceive in hybrid regimes? Finally, what obstacles to their political participation in formal political institutions and civil society do women experience in hybrid regimes? In this article-based dissertation, a mixed-methods approach is employed to study the dimensions of WPP, combining a quantitative study of hybrid regimes over time with three qualitative studies focused on the empirical case of contemporary Turkey. Turkey is a typical example of a hybrid regime with both democratic and authoritarian characteristics, and the incumbent government's strategic targeting of gender politics and its actors makes Turkey a significant case to better explore challenges and opportunities for women's political participation in hybrid regimes. The dissertation's findings suggest three main aspects of women's political participation and political influence in hybrid regimes. First, exploring women's political participation across civil society and formal political institutions illustrates the interlinked nature of both dimensions and the relevance of these linkages for women's opportunities to participate in hybrid regimes. Second, hybrid regimes pose complex contexts for women's political participation, where opportunities to exert influence may change but where incumbent government actors retreat to different strategies targeting women and (anti-) gender equality claims. Hence, women's political participation across both dimensions must be dynamic to adapt and resist such changing circumstances. Last, the dissertation illustrates the importance of exploring how informal structures, such as norms or gendered practices, interfere with women's political participation in hybrid regimes. In sum, the dissertation advances gender perspectives in hybrid regime research and illustrates insights from the Turkish case that are relevant for other regime settings.

As women increasingly participate in political decision-making around the world, the research emphasizes the need to further understand how informal barriers shape women's political participation. At the same time, the persistent stability of hybrid political regimes calls for additional inquiry into the impact of hybrid regimes on gender politics and its actors. Based on the case of Turkey, a hybrid regime, this study explores how women MPs navigate gendered, informal obstacles in parliament and to what extent their navigation strategies reflect the broader implications posed by the hybrid regime context. This exploratory study draws on qualitative, in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight women MPs in the Turkish parliament from government and opposition parties. The findings illustrate that navigating the informal barriers women MPs experience in the Turkish parliament happens both individually and in collective ways. Individually, women MPs choose to navigate the informal barriers of gender norms by either assimilating or contrasting the masculine way of doing politics. Collective navigation strategies of women MPs in the Turkish parliament illustrate their approaches to representing women's interests, seeking women's solidarity across the parliament, and linkages with civil society to empower women, which also reflect the different positionings of government and opposition within the Turkish hybrid regime dynamics. The findings reveal the need to further research the complex, dynamic interplay of how informal practices and hybrid regime tactics target gender politics and its actors, while also giving more attention to women's agency in tackling and countering obstacles to their political power within and beyond political institutions.

Government-controlled women's organisations in Turkey are undermining genuine feminist organisations in the country, according to research I have undertaken over the past three years.

I have been studying how the Turkish leadership under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan strategically uses women’s organisations that it funds and controls – so-called ‘women-GONGOs’ – in order to mimic and undermine feminist groups. My qualitative research is based on interviews and meetings with more than 20 feminist women's organisations across Turkey and explores their experiences of the country’s changing civic space.

Reflective of a wider, global trend of changing civil society space and anti-gender backlash against womenʼs rights, research is increasingly interested in exploring the dynamics and implications of hybrid and authoritarian regimes strategies toward civil society, and womenʼs organizations in particular. Nevertheless, few have focused on studying the role of governmental womenʼs organizations – so-called women-GONGOs - as mechanisms of regime strategies, such as in the case of competitive-authoritarian Turkey where women-GONGOs aim to constrain civil society space and feminist, gender equality-oriented discourse and practice. In this study, the aim is to explore how feminist, oppositional womenʼs organizations, despite their “outsider” positions in Turkeyʼs civil society, use and reshape feminist strategies to adapt, renegotiate or resist women-GONGOs as mechanisms of control, co-optation and regime interference.Based on in-depth interviews with 21 womenʼs organizations in Turkey, the study finds that “outsider”, feminist womenʼs organizations in competitive-authoritarian Turkey perceive the influence of women-GONGOs as central to possibilities and limitations in civil society and womenʼs organizing. Consequently, interviews show that “outsiders” employ a variety of feminist strategies, mostly in combination, to create or maintain their activism and operations within the Turkish de-democratization context, for example turning to grassroots in combination with finding new alliances, or connected to sustaining activities within broader democratization movements. However, the study suggests that the changing space of civil society in Turkey affects these “outsiders” in different ways; for example service-oriented womenʼs organizations are less constrained in their feminist strategies compared to claims-making “outsiders”. Lastly, the study illustrates how the dominant role of women-GONGOs in Turkey impacts feminist discourse and practice of “outsiders”, thereby providing empirical insights and theoretical contributions to better understanding transformations of feminist engagement in Turkey and similar gendered de-democratization contexts across the Mediterranean and beyond.

Despite global tendencies of increasing political representation and empowerment of women, Turkey represents a deviant case where women`s political representation consistently ranks low on national and local governance levels and political decision-making remains a male-dominated sphere. While the women`s movement(s) in Turkey are persistent and vital driving forces of political change on women`s rights and gender equality, the formal political arena continues to pose barriers and challenges that uphold women`s underrepresentation. This paper seeks to explore how woman parliamentarians in Turkey, despite their political underrepresentation in decision-making, experience and understand their own role as representatives for women and women`s interests. 

In doing so, this study draws on fieldwork conducted as in-depth interviews with elected woman representatives across political parties in the Turkish parliament. The aim of this paper is to explore two main issues: first, in which ways do woman parliamentarians experience gendered challenges in elected office and how do they form strategies of response or resistance? Secondly, how do woman parliamentarians understand and define their own meanings of representing women and women`s interests in a male-dominated political arena?