Labor Choices Of Educated Women In Turkey

One of the main challenges Turkey faces is the low participation of women in the labor market.
Although the female labor force participation rate (working or looking for a job) has been on the increase for years, it attained only approximately 31 percent in the beginning of 2015; roughly one out of three Turkish women is in the labor force. For the sake of comparison let me note that even in European countries with the lowest figures for the female participation rate, like Italy or Greece, this rate is well over 50 percent.
Economic development theory and world experiences have long confirmed that as long as few women are employed in non-farming sectors, a country will not be able to reach its full potential. So, Turkey should accelerate the growth of female employment in order to reach a female participation rate around 50 percent at least within two decades. This objective requires one percentage point increase per year in the participation rate. This task is quite challenging since the average increase rate has been at 0.7 percent in recent years (female participation rate increased from 23 to 30 percent since 2004) mostly due to an increase in the education level of women. Indeed, as the share of women having higher degrees of education increases, the participation rate will also increase. The share among working age women without an elementary school diploma is limited to 14 percent in urban areas, to 35 percent for a high school degree and to 70 percent for tertiary degrees.
Nevertheless, this composite effect might be slowed and attain an insufficient upper limit as long as there are cultural obstacles to working among educated women. This dimension of female participation in the labor force has not been analyzed in Turkey before. A paper presented during the 5th Labor Market Workshop organized by the World Bank and Bahçeşehir University's Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM) on June 18 brought new insights in this issue. Hande Paker and Gökçe Uysal from Bahçeşehir University presented the findings of their research (“Labor Force Participation Decisions of Educated Women in Turkey”) based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and a survey of 3,600 educated women (high school or university).
The paper notes first of all that the participation rates of Turkish educated women, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), are far below those of some developing countries. For example, for the group aged 15-65 the participation rate is 75 percent for university degree holders in Mexico and 59 for high school degree holders, while it is 72 and 37 percent, respectively, in Turkey. These figures already indicate that there is a problem in the attitudes of Turkish educated women towards working. The research of Paker and Uysal asserts that traditional gender roles regarding childcare and labor division at home have determinant effects on the working decisions of educated women.
A large majority of females in the study think that children aged 0-3 must be taken care of by their mother. According to the econometric computation of the authors, having one more child aged 0-3 decreases the probability of labor force participation by 12.7 percent and one more child aged 4-7 by 6 percent. So, increasing the number of nurseries and subsidizing them might have limited positive effects on working decisions, contrary to beliefs claiming that encouraging childcare is a magic wand. Their findings indicate that expanding childcare opportunities is necessary but clearly insufficient in this policy area. Many women, though they have a profession, are not very eager to work if their husband has an income considered “sufficient.” The authors affirm that female participation in the labor force drops “significantly” if the husband earns a good amount.
On the other hand, traditional gender roles create a dilemma for women. Paker and Uysal constructed an index of “inner conflict” reflecting the compatibility of working and being a mother. Econometric computation shows that women experiencing higher inner conflict are less likely to participate in the labor market. It is worth it to add that flexible working time appears to have a positive and sizable effect on female participation. Unfortunately, Turkey lacks flexible time in this regard. To summarize, the number of working women will continue to increase, but as long as there are not radical changes in traditional attitudes, this increase will remain limited.

SEYFETTİN GÜRSEL (Cihan/Today's Zaman)