The Economics of Gender Equality in the Labour Market

Policies in Turkey and other Emerging Economies

Meltem İnce Yenilmez, Gül Ş. Huyugüzel Kişla, Meltem İnce Yenilmez, Gül Ş. Huyugüzel Kişla

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000351521
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Economía
• Categoria: Economía laboral

This book evaluates the global labour market in the context of gender equality, and the associated policies and regulations, particularly in developing markets, to recommend measures for encouraging gender equality. It exposes the barriers that women employees encounter as well as some of the societal and workplace policies they, specifically, are subject to. Important themes within this topic include participation rates, the looming gap in hourly pay, availability of part-time and full-time positions, value, and social status associated with jobs held by men and women.

The book examines how global gender policy objectives, such as gender equality in careers, gender balance in decision-making, and gender dimensions in research, can be incorporated into policy frameworks. The book analyzes the gendered nature of assumptions, processes and theories. The juxtaposition between family and work, tradition and modernity, and dependency and autonomy, clearly still seems to be misunderstood. Therefore, the book asks whether work improves women's positions in society and/or changes their roles in their families. The authors explore and uncover the connections among employment, entrepreneurship, migration economies, and gender global labour markets and provide helpful solutions to the perceptions surrounding women's status, risks, and inequality that limit their economic participation.

This insightful read provides comprehensive details on a variety of themes and encourages further research on policies that are key to promoting gender equality. The book will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers of labour and feminist economics, the economics of gender, women's studies and sociology.

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Bridging the gender gap in emerging economies for a better future of work for all

Meltem İnce Yenilmez

“The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Introduction

Ongoing debates discuss gender disparity in labor market participation and economic opportunities. There are perceived gaps in economic opportunities for men and women, and this has significant impacts on labor productivity and earnings. Owing to these incidents, the types of jobs have brought about significant differences in human capital.

In truth, when one assesses the number of women against the number of men across industries, fields, professions, firms and sectors, it is impossible to overlook the gaping hole between men’s and women’s jobs. This gap shows that evolving economic development and restructuring of avenues of employment is not enough to disrupt the gender segregation witnessed. By evaluating global data, it is easy to see that women dominate lower-impact jobs and work in or manage small establishments. In Turkey, the ratio of employed women is far less than that of men. Statistics released in 2014 show that out of every four women in Turkey, only one is employed. And women are segregated in the labor force. Most women are employed in low-paying and low-skilled jobs, for example, in the textile industry and in agriculture. Gender inequality in Turkey’s employment is responsible for the underutilization of women in the labor force. Although there has been a considerable rise in women’s employment, there is still a serious need for a policy that will ensure an equal opportunity role for both males and females in the work environment. There are many contributing factors to the skewed involvement of women in the labor force. The gender difference in employment roles and the social roles of women contribute to the imbalance in the labor force. There’s also an unfair job requirement set by employers and the lack of required qualifications of unemployed women plays a significant role in the low population of women in labor force. The gender difference in labor force has social, economic, political and cultural contributing factors. Addressing these issues should involve a constant effort and creation of policies that will eliminate the gender bias in workplaces.

In the informal sector, the situation is even worse as women in this sector are primarily overrepresented among unpaid family workers. On a general note, women rarely rise to powerful positions in the labor market. Over the years, there have been several misconceptions about women in leadership. Most of these women are seen as arrogant, disrespectful, pushy and stubborn, whereas men who occupy the same capacity are regarded as being ambitious with excellent leadership skills. Other assumptions view women as subordinates to men who would not do well when asked to lead. The social belief of a woman’s role being in the bedroom has done little to help them in developing the leadership qualities necessary to succeed. Another assumption is that women often follow others’ opinions at the expense of what they feel is right, thus making them unfit to lead. Once people feel a leader is not in control, they mostly ignore the leader’s decisions. Also, women are known to prefer an inclusive and collaborative style of leadership, further contributing to the view that they are not confident of ruling on their own.

Another contributing factor to the low involvement of women in leadership is the social role of women being the primary caregivers in families and the other household responsibilities that are expected of them. In Turkish society, women are required to put the needs of their families above their careers and other ambitions. According to research, women who make it to the top of their careers are usually unmarried, without children, or focused on their careers before starting a family. As a result, companies believe that women will most times place their families over their careers and in return limit the responsibilities given to women. To be at the top of one’s career, there are moments when one needs to do overtime at work – this, however, conflicts with women’s social roles at home – thereby making it difficult for women to create a healthy work/life balance. Networking plays a crucial role in a professional’s journey to the top. Networking is the backbone of any business, but women’s roles limit them from participating in these networking activities. Also, most networking activities, such as clubbing and golf, are male-oriented.

Due to inadequate access to better opportunities, the perceived gender gap reinforces institutional and labor market failures. For instance, women prefer to work in jobs with flexible working arrangements, to be able to combine work and their domestic responsibilities. These working arrangements, which are primarily informal or part time, carry significantly lower earnings than formal and full-time jobs. With the higher number of women working in such positions, there is decreased motivation to become active participants in the labor market.

Therefore, women mainly specialize in nonmarket work more than market work, which deepens the segregations in time use, access to inputs, market, and institutional failures that traps women in lower-paying positions. To break out of this trap, there must be interventions to lift time constraints, improve women’s access to productive jobs, and correct market and institutional failures.

Feminist economic theory focuses on the marginalization of women in traditional institutions and other positions in society. Women are marginalized and are excluded from many activities and situations because of the norms, traditions and discriminatory laws that are still abundant. Therefore, women face severe difficulties attaining positions associated with elevated status, power and money. This challenge is linked with the philosophy concerning laws and norms that the differences between roles played by women and those represented by men determine the kinds of opportunities they can encounter (England, 1993). Therefore, these gender roles significantly affect the chances women have of pursuing individual achievements such as education or career growth. When these women enter the labor market, they encounter restrictions, and the economic opportunities available for them are limited.

Traditional values also limit the number of opportunities women can access to the economy, especially in male-dominated employment positions. Nevertheless, gender roles can be used in evaluating and assessing the connections between gender roles and inadequate economic opportunities for women.

In Turkey, family units are perceived to have men as breadwinners and representatives of their own family. The perceived role is also seen as a prestigious position and held high socially. On the other hand, women are perceived as managers, caretakers or organizers of all household functions. This position may be valued if the household runs smoothly. Therefore, many women face intense pressure to eliminate their search for formal employment or higher education.

Nevertheless, limited opportunities for women in the labor market are a significant concern not only for Turkey but for the world at large because they lead to substantial adverse effects and can hinder any country from reducing poverty and attaining sustainable growth. It is therefore not surprising that the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) place women’s empowerment and gender equality as one of its primary goals. These obstacles to growth are also the reason why many nations around the world are changing, structuring and aligning policies to tackle the issues of gender inequality. This chapter examines the extent, structure, nature and characteristics of the prevalence of the looming gap between the number of women against men in Turkey’s labor force, and the reasons for its existence.

The goal is to develop strategies toward bridging the gender gap in the Turkish labor market. Bridging this gender gap is vital for many reasons. As stated earlier, it can help tackle poverty due to the direct and interrelated contributions to the welfare of the household. It also improves the position held by women as they can now take part in family decisions and making sure that primary income is used for necessities such as health care and children’s education. Secondly, gender equality, in terms of employment, has to be enhanced based on the internationally recognized standpoint that every individual is deserving of the same opportunities. This comes from the perspective of fundamental rights.

The World Bank (2012) observed that gender equality in all forms of employment is not only about empowering women but ensuring equity, decreased efficiency loss, fairness, increased productivity, increased social protection contributions, opening tax bases, improved decision making concerning development, business and economic freedom, increased innovation and competition, improved business expansion opportunities for stronger, inclusive development and growth.

Therefore, gender equality sits as the most significant development challenge across Turkey. Over 78.3 percent of women around the globe are killed (ILO, 2019), whereas the women’s employment ratio was just 51.9 percent. In Turkey, 65.7 percent of men are employed, while over 28.9 percent of women employed in the population. Therefore, the women working actively as part of Turkey’s economy are just 33.5 percent, which is lower than the worldwide average of 48.7 percent. Nevertheless, during the year, women in Turkey have witnessed social exclusion due to employment choices and jobless rates, which also triggered the currency crisis that began in August 2018. Additionally, analysts predict that the employment to dependency ratio will be abnormally high by the end of the year 2018. Therefore, this chapter looks in particular at the main drivers of the gender gap in employment in Turkey and toward finding the best policies that can transform the Turkish labor market into a more inclusive setup while promoting gender equality.

Barriers to women’s employment opportunities

Diverse works of literature outline demographic factors, globalization, political systems, economic development, cultural and social norms, education, availability of infrastructure, macroeconomic factors, perceptions and expectations as primary factors influencing gender equality in employment. Current evidence points to the fact that development is positively affected by an increase in female labor participation.

Studies, lectures and discourses have tried to assess the reasons why female labor participation usually takes a plunge before rising as economic development improves. Boserup (1970) provides insights that during the early stages of development in any country, men tend to displace women in the labor force because they already have the knowledge and skills to take on better positions. Nevertheless, this phenomenon may also take a different shape (bringing about the establishment of another focus on the effects of income and substitution). Therefore, when development occurs, the unearned income in the household rises, which reduces the motivation for women to work outside the home. This negatively affects the growing revenues grossed by women and leads to a condition called “income effect,” which means that households with higher income provide more avenues for leisure for women.

On the other hand, the substitution effect works in the opposite direction such that when female wages rise, more women are motivated to enter the labor market (Goldin, 1995; Mammen and Paxson, 2000; Bloom et al., 2009; Chaudhuri, 2009; Tam, 2011). Niemi and Lloyd (1981) also provide a different insight into the independent and positive impacts on female labor force participation brought on by inflation. Therefore, the effects of increasing inflation will not significantly negatively affect the lower earnings of women as opposed to their counterparts (Cardoso, 1992).

Nevertheless, Sakellariou (2011) also presents additional insights on the fractures in female-male participation in the labor force within rural societies, citing that deviations in profile (demographic data) and educational fulfillment of the population influence the inequality between men and women participating in the economic. Therefore, increments in education and literacy levels witnessed contribute to the growth and expansion of the female labor force participation. Patacchini et al. (2012) who observed, systematically, that an increase in the level of education also supports these views and diminishing effects of fertility choices can positively affect women’s participation in the labor market, with significant differences witnessed in different institutional and welfare settings across EU countrie...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Bridging the gender gap in emerging economies for a better future of work for all
• 2 Women’s labor force participation and gender discrimination in the labor market
• 3 The gender-responsive budgeting: a way of coping with gender inequalities
• 4 Gender equality in the finance sector: closing gaps or another “old boys’ club”?
• 5 Is there gender equality in employment indicators? A comparative study for emerging markets
• 6 The relationship between minimum wages and youth employment in OECD countries
• 7 Gender gap in the labour market: a comparative view for youth and adults
• 8 An assessment of the gender (in)equality in education
• 9 Intersectional challenges in the labor market: the case of Roma women
• 10 What makes labor markets inaccessible for women migrants? From “triple disadvantage” to multiple challenges
• 11 Femvertising: a new concept for female empowerment in advertising
• 12 Evaluation of labor market issues in sport and exercise environment in Turkey
• 13 How patriarchal power structures undermine women’s empowerment and gender equality: the case of Nigeria
• Index