Women in Macro-Level Policy Frameworks: A Gender-Sensitive Analysis of Development Plans and Government Programs in Türkiye (1963–2025)
Abstract
This study examines the representation of women in Türkiye's macro-level policy frameworks and its implications for spatial planning between 1963 and 2025. Through qualitative document analysis, content analysis, and critical discourse analysis of twelve Five-Year Development Plans, sixty-seven Government Programs, and eight Presidential Annual Programs, the research applies a three-tier classification — gender-blind, gender-aware, and gender-sensitive — derived from the gender mainstreaming literature. The findings reveal that while policy discourse has progressively shifted toward gender-sensitivity, discursive progress and structural change remain systematically decoupled. Four structural mechanisms reproduce the implementation gap: the absence of binding monitoring frameworks, temporal misalignment between plans and programs, thematic discontinuity across annual programs, and undefined inter-institutional coordination. International conventions functioned as intermittent discursive triggers rather than sustained institutional drivers. The study contributes the first longitudinal comparative framework for analysing gender mainstreaming across Türkiye's full planned development era.
Keywords
Gender mainstreaming, implementation gap, spatial planning, policy discourse, development plans
Supporting Institution
This study was supported by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TUBITAK) under the Grant Number 224K658. The authors thank to TUBITAK for their supports.
Project Number
TÜBİTAK 224K658
Ethical Statement
The article complies with national and international research and publication ethics. Ethics committee approval was not required for this study.
Thanks
This study was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) under the 3005 - Innovative Solutions in Social Sciences and Humanities Program with the grant number 224K658 and titled “Proposal for Gender-Sensitive Urban Planning Guidelines Considering Disadvantaged Groups: The Case of Türkiye”. The authors would like to thank TÜBİTAK for its support. This study is an integral part of / derived from the ongoing doctoral dissertation titled “Assessment of Planning Profession within the Scope of Gender Equality and A New Planning System Proposal for Women in Türkiye”, conducted at the Department of City and Regional Planning, Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Dokuz Eylül University, within the framework of the aforementioned project.
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