Educating more women further will help Turkey develop

Outlook

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unlikely to change his reactionary attitude to women, declaring on International Women's Day that a woman was above all a mother. His wife Emine will not challenge him, recently hailing the Ottoman harem as preparing women for life. But in the polarised society that is Turkey today, other women are determined to protest against such evils as domestic violence.

Gulden Turktan, head of the Women's Entrepreneurs' Association of Turkey and president of the W20 group of female leaders launched in Ankara last September to boost the role of women in economic growth, has said that Turkey might achieve a substantial reduction in the poverty rate by raising the number of women in the workforce.

Impacts

• The low female labour force participation rate will continue to drag down Turkey's overall rate, second-lowest in the OCED in 2013 at 50.8%.
• Educating women will bring more into the workforce; the 2014 participation rate for female illiterates was 16.0% but for graduates 71.3%.
• Despite Erdogan's traditionalist rhetoric, only 9.7% of women surveyed in 2013 agreed it was better to educate a son than a daughter.