Taking Parenthood Seriously: How Parental Status Predicts Women Legislators' Career Outcomes

In the past decade, there has been renewed interest in the role of parenthood in explaining women's career outcomes in politics. Yet empirical understanding of how and in what circumstances the parental status of women in legislatures affects their political career is not well developed. Utilizing an original dataset comprising the entire population of Turkish legislators, our study centers on the tenure duration of approximately 12,500 legislators spanning from 1920 to 2023. Our exploratory analyses show that women in parliament are characterized by weaker ties with their regional constituency, younger age, and higher representation in opposition parties compared to their male counterparts, which collectively highlight the enduring presence of gendered hierarchies in the parliament. Results from a series of negative binomial models indicate that women's parliamentary career lasts shorter than that of men, especially among legislators with children. Specifically, the length of parliamentary career is significantly shorter among women with two or more children, compared with women with no child and men with children. Our results lend strong support for studies conceptualizing the parliament as a gendered workplace.