In Turkiye, the employment of women and their access to the labor market and livelihoods are gaining increasing importance every day.
While women make up 49.9% and men 50.1% of Turkiye’s population, according to the Household Labor Force Survey results, the labor force participation rate for individuals aged 15 and older was 32.8% for women and 70.3% for men in 2021.
Education plays a critical role in women’s participation in the workforce. When examined, only 12.4% of women who are illiterate are part of the workforce, whereas this figure is 65.6% for women who are graduates of higher education.
Studies in this field have the potential to offer new employment opportunities to women from different segments of society, and, importantly, the removal of barriers to women’s employment plays a critical role in the transformation process of the labor market.
Through the collaboration between INGEV and Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center (IPC), the ActHuman Social Inclusion Initiative aims to develop strategies to increase women’s employment and participation in the labor force in its sixth year. Under the title “Women’s Employment and Barriers & Opportunities in the Workforce: A Guide to Moving Forward,” our main goal is to increase women’s representation in the economy and their active participation in decision-making processes.
In this context, we will present social policy recommendations integrating a gender equality perspective with the social policy document to be released in May. These recommendations are expected to facilitate the employment of women and include measures to remove barriers in the workforce. This approach aims to both increase women’s economic independence and contribute to Turkiye’s goals of promoting sustainable development.
The academic coordination of the process is undertaken by Dr. Esra Durceylan Kaygusuz, a faculty member of the Sabancı University Economics Program, while the advisory board meets on April 3rd.