The Place of Women in Employment: Turkish Case

Abstract

The development of a country is bound to most effective utilization of production factors, which are labor, natural resources, capital, and entrepreneurship in all countries in the world. Labor force mostly favors men as distribution is concerned. Until the industrial revolution, the presence of women in the labor market had remained in the secondary place regarding labor force status. The subordinate position of women in the labor market is explained by the traditional division of labor. According to gender-based division of labor in society, basically saying the roles such as bearing a child and growing the baby, and doing the housework are seen as the main duties of women, whereas earning money by working in the market is seen as the duty of men. Gender relations contain an unequal power relationship with male domination and female subordination in most spheres of life. Men and the tasks, functions, and values attributed to them are valued in many aspects higher than women and what is associated with woman. The background of gender equality policies in Turkey is constituted by the Republican reforms. In the years following the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, a modern state structure was formed on the one hand and an extensive social transformation was realized on the other, with the reforms made in the faith that full equality between women and men should be established. Women’s paid work began with the industrial revolution. As industry evolved, the nature of the employment opportunities for workers who find little; mechanization, increased division of labor and specialization of the labor force in factories, especially on cheap labor needs have increased. Therefore, men as well as women and even children were taken en masse to the industry. Women are seen as cheap labor since the industrial revolution. Women’s labor force participation is prevented by economic and social factors. Economic factors, low wages and lack of social security may specify the form. Social factors are lack of education, patriarchal mentality, and understanding of gender. The joint effect of the rural–urban migration since the 1950s and the limited employment creation capacity of the Turkish economy are seen as reasons of withdrawal of women from the labor force and result in high female silence. In Turkey, rate of female labor force participation is low and gradually decreasing day by day. While the women that are working in agriculture sector without wage and social security are considered to have participated in the labor force, the women in urban areas that are working as housewives are not included in labor work. The women, members of the migrating families due to applied agricultural strategies from rural to urban areas, are being excluded from labor force, since they become housewives when they start to live in urban areas. Unlike the world’s most developed and developing nations, in Turkey our women of traditional role failed to move out of forms of employment. It is a failure to conclude that most of the female workers in Turkey undertake their traditional tasks which are considered as traditionally women’s jobs. Therefore, it can be argued that these implications have not only economic consequences, but also sociological dimensions. The numbers of woman employees in the world have been dramatically increased recently. As seen in Turkey from June 2009 to June 2013 data, it tends to increase in women’s employment is seen that in recent years. Female employment tends to increase in recent years seems to be. 3.4 million women in non-agricultural employment in the sixth month of 2013 was close to 4 million 872 thousand. For 6 years, there has been an increase of around 44%. The last five years of non-agricultural, urban areas in a sense, an increase in the number of working women has been observed in the 1.5 million. The involvement of women in the workforce has been examined in this research. First, women’s position in the workforce has been observed in relation to country development and women’s status in economical and social fields has been mentioned. Second, employment as a term and the importance of women taking part in the business world have been mentioned. Which fields women work in Turkey has been examined, and data from Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) has been used in this study.