If Turkey could improve its female labor force participation rate to that of South Korea, it could have a national income of $1.1 trillion today.

What is the main distinguishing feature of the present era? I increasingly think that the current era is that of premade lists. We have lists of the largest avenues and the most crowded cities. It is very easy to compare your country with others. Figures are easily accessible. In the past, it needed effort to prepare any kind of list. Today, it is possible to compare any two things and identify the position of your county in the world rank. The list of best and worst countries for women was announced in late 2011. There are 165 countries on the list, and Turkey ranks 114^th. That is, Turkey is not a good country to live for women. According to this, Turkey is among the top 51 in the league of disrespect to women. And this is bad news. Let me tell you why.

During the previous era, Turkey had growth via rural to urban migration. When I was a child in the early 1960s, only 30 percent of the population lived in urban areas. Back then, Turkey was a rural country. Currently, the urbanization rate has reached 75 percent, in harmony with the trends in the rest of the world. Since 2008, more than half of the world population has been living in urban areas. In Turkey, however, the population that has moved from the rural to urban areas has not been well-furnished with skills, unlike the case in Greece. In the 1960s, the agricultural productivity of Greece tripled that of Turkey. Greek’s rural to urban immigrants were more skilled than their Turkish peers, who moved to urban areas as they thought cities were paved with gold. At the end of the day, as people continued switching from agriculture to industry and services, the productivity of the immigrant population automatically tripled. In other words, Turkey’s economy has so far grown automatically thanks to internal migration. And we have come to these days.

Now, if Turkey seeks to become one of the top ten economies of the world by 2023, it should not rely much on internal migration in supporting growth via productivity gains. But it is possible to achieve a lot in a short time in terms of improving female labor force participation. Indeed, TEPAV economist Esen Çağlar’s calculations suggest that if Turkey could raise the female labor force participation rate to that in South Korea, it could have a national income of $1.1 trillion today. The calculation works like this: Korea’s population is 49 million; Turkey’s is 73 million. The numbers of women in labor force are 10 million and 7 million, respectively. Thus, female labor force participation is 50 percent in the former compared to 23 percent in the latter. If 50 percent of the women in Turkey joined the labor force, the country’s economy could be 30 percent larger. Yes, the calculation is based somewhat on the “if my aunt had a beard, she would be my uncle” approach, but it is enlightening. Turkey is the only OECD country where the female labor force participation rate has not advanced on an annual basis. We must be ashamed of this performance. But my observation is that here in Turkey we are not ashamed of not respecting women. In fact, we are not even aware of this problem.

Turkey has to become a country that pays more respect to women. Why are not we like that? I see three reasons: first, we are unable to protect women against violence. Second, women are not represented in the work force, meaning they are not able to access the right to work. Third, they are not represented sufficiently in the government and the senior posts of public administration. The study also considers the access to education and health services. Turkey does not perform as badly in those fields.

Turkey has to ensure that more women participate in the labor force so as to achieve its targets for 2023, let alone not being on this list of shame. Turkey has to enable migration from the private domain to the labor force aside from rural to urban migration. From this perspective, it needs a comprehensive program that handles multiple issues, from the urban infrastructure to flexible employment arrangements, reducing the cost of day care for children and the elderly via public incentives, and efficient measures to prevent violence against women. But it appears that Turkey hasn’t even investigated whether the ban on headscarves, an issue debated on any occasion, has had an impact on women’s participation in the labor force. There has not been a single analytical study on this matter, except for those based on anecdotes.

Then, we are either indifferent or disrespectful to women. The situation is self-evident, if we disregard the romanticism of Mothers’ Day.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 26.06.2012