Election Board Announces Women-Men Rate of MP Candidates: 996 Women-3855 Men

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The Supreme Election Board (YSK) has announced the distribution of MP candidates for June 24 election by gender.

According to the data of YSK, women constitute 20.5 percent whereas men constitute 79.5 percent of 4,851 candidates.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has become the party that showed the highest number of women candidates with 38 percent, followed by the İYİ Party with 26.5 percent; Homeland Party with 24 percent; Republican People’s Party (CHP) 22.6; Justice and Development Party (AKP) with 12.6 percent, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) with 11.6 percent, Felicity Party with 11.6 percent and HÜDA-PAR with 7.5 percent.

Of the 68 independent candidates, women constitute 16 percent and men 84 percent.

It is important that gender stats are kept

Speaking to bianet, sociologist Nükhet Sirman stated that it is an important first step for the YSK to take gender distribution into consideration concerning MP candidates to understand society’s sociology, Sirman said that more categories need to be produced in order to grasp the differences in the society:

“Keeping gender statistics is very important in terms of having a picture of the society. It is especially important in Turkey where gender is not considered a date in measuring discrimination.

“Gender wasn’t being handled as a meaningful sociological category. However, people’s living conditions, futures, status and even dreams may change by gener.

“But these stats need to involve more meaningful categories to have a better grasp of the society, otherwise overlooking the society’s differences means to assimilate everybody to normative identities”.

“It is an important first step for the YSK to take gender distribution into consideration concerning MP candidates. We hope that more categories be produced and this will be done in statistics in different fields”.

3,855 men, 996 women

The women-men rates covered by bianet and other media outlets were prepared over temporary candidate lists.

After YSK’s Finalized Candidate List was announced, distribution of all MP candidates by gender was declared.

According to the finalized list, only 4.9 of the women were nominated from the first place. (ÇT/TK)