SITE Seminar | Under pressure: Electoral competition and women's representation
Join us for the next SITE Seminar! On November 3, 2025, we are joined by Pamela Campa (SITE). How can women's representation rise without quotas? Campa presents new evidence from Turkish municipal elections on how competition can reshape who parties put on the ballot.
Working paper title: Under Pressure: Electoral Competition and Women's Representation
By: Pamela Campa, Perihan Saygin & Semih Tumen
Abstract
How can women's representation improve in countries without legislated gender quotas? We study municipal elections in Turkey from 2009 to 2019. A conservative dominant party, Erdogan's AKP, is often challenged by a Kurdish party that promotes gender equality in electoral lists. Exploiting within-municipality variation, we find that when the Kurdish party wins, AKP increases its share of female candidates by 25–30% in the next election. Wins by other opposition parties have substantially smaller impacts. These results suggest that one party empowering women can help reduce gender gaps in electoral lists more broadly.
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