Despite an increasing trend over recent years, women’s representation in parliament did not exceed 20 percent in Turkey. The underrepresentation of women persists despite being conducted with a closed-list proportional representation system associated with higher women representation in the literature. In this article, we shift the focus from electoral institutions to candidate selection to explain women’s underrepresentation. Using an original dataset of candidates in 7 elections (2002-2023) and over 15000 candidates, we study the impact of gender and various candidate qualifications on the rank position of candidates in party lists. Our preliminary findings show that women are less likely to get promising ranks in the party lists, controlling for their occupation and education as well as their legislative, party and local experience. While being a local candidate and having electoral experience increases the likelihood of getting promising ranks in general and this positive effect is higher for women candidates.