THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL REPRESENTATION: AN ANALYSIS OF WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE IN FORMAL POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN TURKEY FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Today, the necessity of addressing development not only with its economic dimension but also with its social and environmental dimensions has been accepted by the international community. Alternative Women and Development approaches that emerged in the 1970s also emphasized that the idea of development without women would not be possible, and that the main development is possible with the empowerment of women as important actors of development. It is a dominant view that is agreed in the literature on women and gender studies that one of the most important tools for achieving empowerment, which is conceptualized as “gaining the ability of women to make strategic life choices”, is their participation in decision-making mechanisms. In this context, it is vital for women to participate in formal politics with their own perspective in order to solve their own problems based on their own gendered experiences. In this study, inadequate political representation of women in Turkey, as a candidate to be among the developed countries, is discussed from a gender perspective in terms of reasons, results and solutions. Keywords: Political participation, gender, women and development, empowerment.