Impact of Trade Liberalization on the Gender Gap in Turkey

There has been an increasing number of literature on globalization and its effects on labour markets. With increasing global economic competition employment conditions have changed. Evidence shows that greater trade openness is associated with increase in women’s share of paid employment. In this paper, we concentrate on the aspects of trade on gender discrimination and particularly Turkey’s situation on this context. In the period of 1970-2005 there was substantial overall improvement in women’s quality of life, as reflected in social indicators. Women lived longer, had fewer children and more schooling. From the statistics, we can say that there is a moderate rise in women’s participation in the labour force. Usually, schooling, participation in politics and work and earnings can be used to measure women’s achievement in comparison with men’s. Focusing on Turkish economy, we know that in 24th January 1980 Turkey announced to follow a far reaching program of stabilization with structural change. The main objective of the program was to shift from an inward to an outward oriented development strategy. With an increase in trade, women transferred from the non productive housework economy to the productive economy. So, it is possible to say that trade create jobs for women but what about the gender gap? There is a quite number of literature for believing that the effect of globalisation may act to widen the gender pay gap. As long as women remain less qualified than men, they are likely to remain lower paying jobs, even if better-paying jobs become available through trade expansion.