KA.DER Releases Woman Representation Report

KA.DER announced its annual report regarding the gender representation in Turkey's workforce and politics, a survey that showed no improvement since last year.

The report also rated Turkey's improvements in parliamentary representation, participation to workforce and other measures. The association gave a fail grade to all measures except women participation in workforce.

"Turkey insists on maintaining its bad situation even though it has all the resources to improve it. This persistence of pushing women to mother and wife roles is obscuring our future. Turkey can't realize its goals to become a true democracy and world's 10th economy is unimaginable without improving women's rights. Turkey's decision-makers must see this reality and act accordingly," Çiğdem Aydın, KA.DER Chairwoman, said in a statement.

Some of the highlights from the report included:

Political representation

* Woman representation in parliament rose from 4.6 percent in 1935 to 14.3 percent in 2011.

* Turkey elected only 1 female prime minister while 28 men took the same post since 1923.

* Woman representation in local governments only remained 1.2 percent. In 2009 elections, only 26 women have been elected as mayor.

* No woman has so far been elected as parliament chairperson.

* Among Turkey's 61 cabinets, only 17 had woman representation while 44 cabinet were only formed by men. The highest representation of women was recorded between 1996-1997 with 10 percent.

Political parties

* Nationalist Movement Party: 3 woman deputies out of 52.

* Justice and Development Party: 46 woman deputies out of 246.

* Peace and Democracy Party: 11 woman deputies out of 35.

* Republican People's Party: 19 female deputies out of 134.

Workforce

* By November 2012, female participant to workforce remained 30.2 percent.

* Turkey's main worker unions (DİSK, Hak-İş, Türk-İş and TİSK) only have 2 women board members, compared to 40 men.  

* The woman representation in the board of TÜSİAD, Turkey's main business association, remained 22.2 percent.

Education

* The woman representation in Turkey's Higher Education Council: 11.1 percent.

* The woman representation in Turkey's public university presidents: 6 percent.

* The woman representation in Turkey's university professors in the academic year 2011-2012: 42 percent.

* The percentage of woman in Turkey's illiterate people: 82 percent. (ÇT/BM)  

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