Project name: Enhancing Women's Participation in Politics and Decision Making
 

Budget: USD 307.227

Timeline: April 2008 - October 2010

What's the situation?

In the Human Development Report of 2006, Turkey ranks at 72nd out of the 75 countries globally for which the relevant Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) statistics are available. GEM measures women’s and men’s abilities to participate actively in economic and political life and their command over economic resources. In this regard, Turkey ranks 90th out of 93 countries globally, followed only by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

As referred in the MDGR 2005, the Government of Turkey sets the target for women’s representation as 17 % in parliament by 2015. After the 2007 General Elections, the percentage of women in Parliament in Turkey increased by twofold, to 50 women, reaching the 9,1 % of the total seats in Parliament. However, at the local level, prior to the 2009 Local Elections, women’s participation at decision-making processes remained very low, where only 0,6 % were mayors (18 out of 3225), 1,81 % were members of the provincial councils (58 out of 3.208) and 2,42 % were members of the municipal councils (834 out of 34.477). The weak knowledge on political and electoral processes as well as the lack of resources to run effective campaigns is among the reasons behind the challenge of making women’s voices heard in the political sphere. As a result of the 2009 Local Elections, only 0.9 percent are mayors (27 out of 2.948), 3.2 percent are members of the provincial councils (110 out of 3.379) and 4.2 percent are municipal council members (1.340 out of 31.790) are women. The current situation reiterated how enhancing women’s participation in politics remains a major challenge and there is a strong need to focus on advocacy activities.

What's UNDP’s mission?

The recently adopted UNDP Gender Equality Strategy (2008-2011) states that “one major objective is to expand the numbers of women in state machinery at all levels, and here, UNDP will focus on supporting the recruitment of higher proportions of women in the executive branch, and on strengthening their capacities”.

The UNDP Country Program Document (CPD), signed by the Government of Turkey and UNDP, identifies gender disparities in public, economic and political life as one of the constrains of gender equality and further describes women in this country as a disadvantaged social group who “have been excluded from involvement in these areas of life resulting in exclusion from economic opportunities and limited political representation and empowerment.” (CPD, 2006-2010).

How is UNDP doing this?

The Project that aims to promote women’s participation in local decision making level, taking as a premise the fact that women can participate by voting and by becoming advocates, activists and political party members and candidates, two specific components have been envisaged:

a) On one hand, capacity development measures. Empowerment of women to become potential candidates for the local elections and awareness of men and women from political parties, promoting women’s involvement to the decision- making arena at the local level and developing necessary skills for policymaking.

b) On the other hand, awareness raising campaigns, provision of education for women and men on rights and obligations as active voters and therefore as responsible citizens. As a major partner for this, local and national Media will be targeted. Within this logic, a communication strategy will be developed at the national and local level with the Media organizations.

The project activities are designed to be implemented in five provinces of Turkey which are: