What is Holding Women Back: The Case of Women’s Labor Force Participation in Turkey

• In Event: 50261 - Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Gender, Work & Family

Abstract

Previous scholarship has reported that in contrast to the employment trends in other OECD countries, women’s labor force participation and employment rates have historically remained low in Turkey. Among the various sociocultural and structural/economic reasons much attention has been paid to macroeconomic factors related to the level of industrialization, the effects of social policies as well as the official discourse, and the impact of women mostly being involved in informal employment practices (Bugra 2020; Dedeoglu 2012; Dedeoglu and Elveren 2012; Toksoz 2012, 2016). On the other hand, the popular hold of conservative ideology, although frequently mentioned in the debates, have not been explored in sufficient detail, especially concerning the affluent and highly educated segment of society. In this study we focus on the question of low labor force participation from an angle rather rarely explored; what potential characteristics can account for the low LFP of the highly educated and affluent women in Turkey? To analyze the dynamics that hold women back, we investigate the gap between the reported beliefs of highly educated women in non-normative/nontraditional gender roles and their actual behaviors of holding up these non-traditional roles. We aim to understand the characteristics associated with preference for traditional gender roles in the household, the characteristics associated with actually holding traditional gender roles, and then to explain the mismatch between attitudes and behaviors that might be contributing to the low labor force participation trend in the last two decades.
Our quantitative data comes from the two most recent waves of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) from 2012 and 2022, focusing on variables related to employment, work experience, level of education, marital status, parental status, childcare arrangements, social class, and religiosity. To complement this picture, we include qualitative data collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with college-educated women from affluent households, the majority of whom have chosen to quit employment and focus on childcare. We observe that in addition to a dissonant decision-making process Daminger (2020) describes in her study, in the context of Turkey, the increasing neoliberal conservatization of the landscape have been determining in the gendered outcomes in labor force participation.

Authors

• Canan Tanir, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley

• Amie Bostic, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley