Women in Macro-Level Policy Frameworks: A Gender-Sensitive Analysis of Development Plans and Government Programs in Türkiye (1963–2025)

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.