Today we are about to learn that if half of the population is confined to their homes, Turkey will not become affluent.

Turkey is the only OECD country in which the female labor force participation rate (FLFP) is below 30 percent. I am not arguing if this is good or bad, I am just sharing a fact. The number of women in employment is lower than the number of housewives: 8 million and 12 million, respectively. This means, 60 percent of Turkey’s women make dolma and watch daytime television. According to TURKSTAT’s household surveys, women prefer sitting at home over a steady paycheck. Do they, really? Is there nothing to blame on employers? There is, but this is changing now.

Recently, I chatted with a friend who is an industrialist from Konya province. He said, “Until recently, we preferred male employees. But the pool of male applicants has shrunk at the city center. So we started to run shuttles to attract employees from the other districts of Konya. The number of female employees has been increasing now.” Konya is among the ten provinces that recorded the highest growth in women’s employment from 2004 to 2011, with a figure above 100 percent. TEPAV’s calculations suggest that non-agricultural the FLFP rate is 20 percent in Turkey and 15 percent in Konya. But the city improved the rate from 7 percent in 2004. We have to note this remarkable improvement over the last seven years. Turkey has been changing with respect to women’s employment dynamics.

Let me draw some conclusions. First, with industry spreading towards it, Anatolia has been changing. In the 1980s, everyone was sure that opening up to the world would bring affluence. Today they are about to learn that if half of the population is confined to their homes, Turkey will not become affluent. Industry teaches this lesson: factories that were opened in Anatolia thanks to Özal’s reforms started to employ women only recently and out of necessity. Increases in women’s employment at the provincial level from 2004 to 2011 validate this. After three decades, market reforms continue to transform Anatolia. This is worth emphasizing.

Second, there is a strong positive relationship between provincial growth and women’s employment. We don’t have province-level growth series, but TURKSTAT releases the statistics on the size of completed or partially completed new buildings to be used as workplaces. The floor area of a new office, wholesale and retail trade, and industrial buildings grow as economic activity in the city becomes more vibrant. According to a study by TEPAV economist Güneş Aşık, women’s employment grows along with the area of new office buildings, and that of new buildings for retail trade in particular. First, let me stress that economic growth enhances women’s participation in the labor force. When it comes to skilled labor, employers open up to employing women, too. With growth and structural transformation, the services sector, where women’s employment is easier and more prevalent, also grows. As needs grow, wages increase.

Third, Aşık’s study says that the increase in the floor area of office buildings in a given province improves women’s employment not only in absolute terms, but also relative to men’s employment. Perhaps we might conclude that new workplaces facilitate women’s participation in the labor force. During our Constitution Platform Citizens’ Assembly meetings, we asked female participants what they considered the most important urban services to be. I remember them raising the issues of public transportation and street lighting. Of course, workplace also matters. People want to be safe where they work. Women in Turkey do not feel safe on the streets, however.

Let me note this down.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 18.12.2012