Taking Parenthood Seriously: How Parental Status Predicts the Career Trajectories of Women in Politics

Abstract

There has been renewed interest in the role of parenthood in explaining women's career outcomes in politics. Yet the empirical understanding of how and in what circumstances the parental status of women in legislatures affects their political career is relatively under-explored. Utilizing an original dataset covering the entire population of Turkish legislators, our study focuses on the tenure duration of those who served in parliament at least once between 1920 and 2023. Our exploratory analyses show that women in parliament tend to have fewer children, compared to men. Results from a series of negative binomial regression models indicate that women's parliamentary career lasts shorter than that of men, especially among legislators with children. Specifically, women with two or more children have significantly shorter parliamentary careers compared to women without children, as well as to men regardless of parental status. Our results lend strong support to studies conceptualizing the parliament as a gendered workplace.