Gender Policy Architecture in Turkey: Localizing Transnational Discourses of Women’s Employment

Abstract

This article studies the institutionalization and implementation of policies addressing women’s low labor force participation in Turkey. It examines how state actors and institutions translate gender mainstreaming and work–family balance in the Turkish policy context. Approaching the state as a multi-layered and hierarchical set of institutions and practices, we trace the emergence of a policy architecture that marginalizes questions of women’s employment and gender equality. Our goal is to shed light on how state actors and institutions actively participate in vernacularizing transnational gender policy norms and, in the process, bend these norms so far that they produce contradictory meanings and practices.