Lack of a sufficient subway system has a role in the low rate of employment among women.

Turkey’s economic agenda is quite poor nowadays. Why? I believe that the shallowness of the agenda is related closely to the lack of a government vision and projects for Turkey’s future. I find it sad that the projects for reconstructing Istanbul are presented as a commitment to Turkey’s future. I find this pathetic. Some claims about manufacturing a domestic automobile seem to be made-up news as they are not grounded on a concrete plan. I believe the recent efforts to intimidate economists who criticize the overt policy mistakes of the central bank and accuse them of lobbying with arguments like “the interest late lobby is on the go” are nothing but biting off more than they can chew. I think these tricks validate, if nothing else, my argument that the ability to make assertive plans about the future has been lost.

Nothing for me, thanks. All this annoys me and makes me sick. Two weeks ago TEPAV economist Esen Çağlar raised the question: “Do women not work due to the lack of urban subway systems?” Let me follow from there today. It’s economic, and definitely more interesting. 

The history of  Republican Turkey is the story of successful economic development. Turkey has grown from a poor agrarian economy into an industrial one. The country has gone from the low-income to the upper-middle income group. At the current stage, there are two interrelated challenges to the growth process. The first involves education. Turkey cannot improve sectoral productivity or establish an innovation-based economy with the current average schooling of seven years based on rote-learning, as revealed by OECD PISA test scores. The mentality which closed down the English preparatory classes of the Anatolian High Schools, formerly devised to improve the quality of English education in Turkey, under the guise of the eight-year obligatory education, cannot raise a generation which will be able to compete globally. Even France has started teaching English during the preschool years, whereas Turkey’s education system, which teaches English at university, is confined to failure. The main challenge for Turkey is education. Not in Kurdish or anything else, but in Turkish and English. An uneducated labor force implies settling for a middle-income economy, falling into the middle-income trap. This is the first point that concerns all countries trying to make a leap. 

The second challenge is unique to Turkey: the female labor force participation ratio is extremely low, around 25 percent. Turkey lags inconceivably behind, even compared to peer countries among the top twenty. The female labor force participation rate is around 55 percent in Indonesia, an overwhelmingly Muslim country like Turkey. Indonesia has twice the female labor force participation as Turkey. The rate in Turkey is too low to be true. The female labor force participation rate is higher even in Egypt. It is still low, but higher than that of Turkey. This is what the figures for 2009 in the report prepared by the State Planning Organization and the World Bank suggest.

This evidently has an aspect involving education. But it is cultural, too. If it was not, the female labor force participation rate would not be systematically lower in overwhelmingly Muslim countries. The problem is that Turkey ranks at the bottom of the list, even among Muslim countries. Why were the reforms of the Republican era not able to bring Turkey forward in this realm? Why do Turkish women leave the private space relatively less often? These are the questions we have to answer. I believe that a subway system that enables punctual and comfortable travel within the city could facilitate women’s participation in the labor force. The presence of subway systems could contribute positively to the level of productivity for they would provide punctual travel within the city. Therefore, the question on top might be answered like this: “The lack of a sufficient subway system has a role in the low rate of employment among women.” Similarly, the headscarf ban for students also has a role. Nilüfer Göle opened our minds about the true nature of the headscarf years ago in her book The Modern Secret (Modern Mahrem).  It is a big deficiency that no study has been conducted on the economic cost of the ban on headscarves in Turkey since then. Turkey has a long way to go.

Still, in this period where uncertainties are growing, the central bank should abandon the confusing interest rate corridor practices and return to the single-policy rate as soon as possible. Life is going on and obstinacy can have no positive outcome for Turkey.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 24.01.2012