Patriarchal Determinants of Women's Employment in Turkey

Introduction

Access to employment has been one of the main areas of combating gender inequality since women entered the macroeconomic agenda as an actor. The focus was on strategies such as vocational and technical education, credit facilities, and incentives that provide employment opportunities for women in the agenda of first development and then the fight against poverty. In this process, thanks to the spread of democracy in the world, the women’s movements, and the efforts carried out under the umbrella of the UN, especially the acceptance of the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by many states, legal arrangements aiming at equality were made. With the strategies of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) announced at the World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985, efforts are being made to implement legal equality. Among the short-term strategies for empowerment, which is the primary goal of DAWN, efforts to increase women's employment continue. Despite international advances, gender inequality in access to employment continues worldwide, which is the basis of economic empowerment. The depth of inequality varies according to the states, depending on the power of the patriarchy. In states where religious and cultural norms strengthen patriarchy, barriers to employment constitute a severe problem for women.

In Türkiye, where the traditional social structure is slowly changing, patriarchy, which includes male-dominated institutions and norms, is determinant in labor markets as in all areas of social life. Turkey remains below all country groups with different levels of economic development in terms of female employment and participation in employment (Buğra & Özkan, 2014, p. 125). According to the 2021/2022 Human Development Index, the female labor force participation rate in Türkiye, which ranked in the Very High Human Development category, was 31.8%, the lowest rate after Oman and Saudi Arabia (UN, 2022, p. 291). In the Republic’s first years, when the revolutions aimed at equal participation of women in social and political life, the ratio of female students to male students in higher education and the percentage of women with professional occupations exceeded some European countries’ high level of development. Although women’s participation in employment was a source of pride for the Republic, it was not seen as the central issue of modernization. After the 1980s, women’s economic and social participation began to be restricted by a not labor-friendly economy and political developments that brought religious conservatism (Buğra & Özkan, 2014, p. 125). In the centennial of the Republic, access to employment continues to be a significant problem for women. In Türkiye, unlike men, women’s labor force participation and employment rates are low, but high unemployment rates. The basis of this problem is the power of the patriarch in the private and public spheres and the support of this power by patriarchal social norms. Especially in recent years, the rise of public patriarchy has strengthened the private patriarchy and deepened the barriers to women.

In private patriarchy, women are responsible for home services such as housework, childcare, and care of the elderly and patients because of the gender division of labor in the household. In this division of labor, while men are employed in the public sphere, women’s employment is left to the approval of the man (father or husband) in the household. Public patriarchy, on the contrary, does not entirely exclude women from the public sphere but allows them to participate in employment in accordance with the gendered division of labor or prevents them through indirect regulations. As the leading actor of the public patriarchy, the state maintains its second position in the labor market with its politics and practices. Private patriarchy is protected by preventing women’s employment or enabling them to participate in employment under unequal conditions, with the discourse of government officials and the spread of conservatism. In this respect, there is a dialectical relationship between private and public patriarchy.