Good Woman, Bad Woman: How Autocrats Frame Women’s Rights and Status

Justice and Development Party (JDP) of Turkey has claimed to significantly improve women’s status during its tenure while domestic and international women’s organizations have consistently criticized its policies for being misogynist. JDP’s claim to have improved women’s status is common among many authoritarian regimes leading to disagreements among scholars about to what extent, if any, autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have improved women’s rights. How can we assess the discourses adopted by autocrat regimes regarding women? Studying discourse is significant because it frames women’s rights and responsibilities, initiates policies, reveals the intentions of political leaders and defines the boundaries of what is politically acceptable, among others. To answer this question, this project undertakes the task of examining the speeches, interviews and media briefings by the top brass, particularly Recep Tayyip Erdogan, current president and the party leader, between 2002 and 2024 by using NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software. The qualitative data are coded and analyzed accordingly. The preliminary findings suggest two major trends taking place simultaneously: One the one hand, the discourses of the top brass praise women as mothers, wives, party activists, volunteers, pious Muslims, and voters, encouraging them to participate in politics in multiple ways. On the other hand, women are subjected to criticism if they engage in politics outside the boundaries of what is permissible. In other words, women are welcome into politics in large numbers as long as they do not question the roles assigned to them, but they are repressed, mocked, and ridiculed when they do. The dichotomy between “good woman” and “bad woman” is key to understanding the limitations of descriptive representation of women that often fall short of asking for gender equality in authoritarian settings and the significance of substantive representation of women that pursue feminist goals.