اثر رشد صادرات گرا بر نتایج بازار کار زنان در ترکیه

Using data from two rounds of an official household labor force survey, this paper analyzes the impact of export-oriented growth strategy on female labor force participation and employment in urban Turkey, controlling for both supply-side and demand-side factors. While the long-term economic growth at the province level is found to have a significant positive effect on both the employment and participation of women, the impact of export-orientation is not as strong and is more pronounced in the case of nonmarried women.

Structural adjustment programs involving export-oriented policies have been implemented in most developing countries in an effort to enhance economic growth and employment for more than two decades. The debate still goes on as to how many of these goals have been fulfilled, and what the economic and institutional dynamics behind the variety of structural adjustment experiences have been. The particular focus on labor market outcomes and institutions is also associated with the increased interest in gender gaps. The pace and the nature of the integration of women into the labor market have not only been a crucial indicator of structural change, but also an important element among the factors that ease or prevent economic transformation. The main argument in favor of export-oriented growth policies in developing countries has been that the shift to an export-promoting trade regime from an import-substituting industrialization strategy creates the potential for an increase in employment (Cox-Edwards & Edwards, 1994; Edwards, 1988; Krueger, 1978 and Krueger, 1981). The basic assumption behind this argument is that export-oriented industries in developing countries are more labor intensive than import-competing industries, as these countries are relatively more labor abundant. The critique of this view, however, asserts that these expectations can also be left unfulfilled in spite of flexible labor markets if low wages lead to demand deficiency and discourage investment and growth (Amsden & Hoeven, 1996; Boratav, Türel, & Yentürk, 1996; Onaran & Stockhammer, 2004; Taylor, 1988). Recently, the gender division of labor, which may decrease women's mobility, is also being put forward as one of the sources of rigidity that slow down the pace of intersectoral change in employment and production (Assaad & Arntz, 2000). Whether the macroeconomic transformation during the implementation of structural adjustment policies has augmented employment opportunities for women and whether gender gaps have narrowed are some of the key issues debated in the literature (Bakker, 1994; Beneria, Floro, Grown, & MacDonald, 2000; Blecker & Seguino, 2002; Çaǧatay & Berik, 1990; Çaǧatay & Özler, 1995; Collier, Cox-Edwards, Roberts, & Bardhan, 1994; Özler, 2000; Seguino, 2000a and Seguino, 2000b; Standing, 1989 and Standing, 1999). On the demand side, there is evidence that export promotion and trade liberalization have led to the feminization of the labor force in many developing countries, although the mechanisms behind this process are not uniform. Increased labor market flexibility and openness to the world economy are expected to generate an increase in female employment, particularly in the tradable sectors, due to lower unit labor costs of women relative to men. This argument also identifies the female labor force with characteristics such as reliability, stability, and flexibility from the viewpoint of employers. It is argued that this process leads to the marginalization of women in low-waged and low-skilled industries. Most studies show that women typically hold low-skill, low-paying jobs, in low capital-intensive, small-scale plants, and they tend to be concentrated in export-oriented sectors. In analyzing the demand-side effects of export orientation, it is also important to take into account the changes in the growth performance of the economy during this major structural change. Apart from these demand-side factors, macroeconomic effects of this shift also work through supply-side decisions. In particular, the stabilization phases of this economic transformation usher in economic fluctuations which may in turn affect female labor force participation through the “discouraged” and the “added worker” effects. Women may become more discouraged during times of high unemployment and/or low growth and withdraw from the labor force. Alternatively, the income and employment instability of the primary wage-earners in the household may draw women into the labor market as additional breadwinners to maintain family income, as is particularly observed in Latin American countries and East Asian countries (Cerruti, 2000; Cox-Edwards & Roberts, 1994; Lim, 2000). Crosscountry differences in terms of social and institutional factors have proven to be influential, as seen in the quite different experiences of Latin American and MENA countries (Aslanbeigui, Pressman, & Sumerfield, 1995; Assaad & Arntz, 2000; Karshenas & Moghadam, 2001). Female participation rates increased in the former with increased unemployment and deteriorating working conditions, which is explained as the feminization of labor force through the flexibilization and globalization of work process (Standing, 1989 and Standing, 1999). This trend is less clear in most MENA countries, not only because of the social norms determining the role of women, but also because of the fact that poverty and volatility in family income have been less dramatic (Karshenas, 1997). As far as the Turkish labor market is concerned, the added vs. discouraged worker effect issue has most recently been addressed in Başlevent and Onaran (2003). In that study, the estimation results on a sample of married couples indicate that, at the time of an economic crisis, women's labor force participation is negatively correlated with the employment of their husbands. While this finding provides evidence in favor of the dominance of the added-worker effect, the authors fail to obtain corroborating evidence from macro-variables since the growth rate of per capita income is not found have a significant effect on the wives' participation status. Instead, the estimated relationship between the wives' participation and the other province-level controls for the demand side of the labor market indicate that women's participation is influenced by long-term conditions rather than those brought about by business cycles. Turkey has shifted from an import-substituting industrialization regime to an export-oriented growth strategy starting from 1980 onward via an orthodox structural adjustment program and has taken important steps forward in terms of integrating with the world economy. During this period, the ratio of manufacturing exports to GNP increased from around 1% in 1979 to 12% by the second half of 1990s. In spite of this major transformation, the labor force participation rates are still at very low levels for women residing in urban areas for reasons discussed in the next section. It is crucial to address the factors that are likely to be responsible for the difficulty in women's involvement in the labor market, especially in wage employment. Accounting for the effects of demand-side factors may shed light on an important component of the economic dynamics that create these conditions. The growth regime of a country is crucial in explaining the demand-side factors that determine female participation rates. It has been argued that, the increased feminization of work may not be realized if export-oriented policies do not sufficiently foster growth. In Turkey, the substantial increase in exports and increased labor market flexibility has not brought with it parallel increases in employment compared with the import substituting industrialization period (Amsden & Hoeven, 1996; Boratav et al., 1996; Horton, Kanbur, & Mazumdar, 1994). In this context, the case of Turkey provides valuable evidence on the existence of various possibilities regarding the employment outcomes of export-oriented growth policies.1 This paper analyzes the effects of export-oriented growth policies on female labor force participation and employment in urban Turkey. In the empirical work, we estimate labor force participation and employment equations for women residing in the urban areas of Turkey using labor force survey and province level macro-data for 1988 and 1994. The explanatory variables include province level controls for the macroeconomic environment, as well as the usual individual characteristics that reflect supply-side factors. One of our purposes is to observe whether female participation and employment respond similarly to the macro- and micro-variables under consideration. An interesting piece of information that can be gathered here is whether the macro-conditions that stimulate participation also lead to increased employment or only create more unemployment. Our models also allow for the comparison of the patterns observed for married women vs. the rest. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to combine individual- and province-level data to test the effect of export-oriented policies on female labor market outcomes. What makes the comparison of empirical results from the two years informative is that 1994 was a year of economic crisis in Turkey. In the spring of 1994, the Turkish Lira depreciated by over 50%, interest rates skyrocketed, and the economic crisis led to an approximately 6% contraction of the Turkish economy by the end of the year. Although it is difficult to assess the effects of structural adjustment convincingly over such a short-time span, we argue that the differences we observe in the participation patterns in the two years can, at least in part, be attributed to business cycles, and a evidence can be gathered as to which of the discouraged or added-worker effects dominates the labor market outcomes for Turkish women. The paper consists of seven sections including this introduction. Section 2 is a brief review of the trends in female labor force participation in Turkey. The economic model, estimation methodology, and the econometric specification are discussed in Section 3. Section 4 presents the data and the stylized facts in the operating sample. 5 and 6 present the estimation results and assess the policy implications of these results, respectively, and Section 7 includes the concluding remarks.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of macroeconomic factors, and in particular the export-oriented growth strategy, on female labor force participation in urban Turkey. Using labor force survey data and province-level data on per capita GDP and export intensity in 1988 and 1994, we found that the effect of long-term growth performance on female labor market outcomes is significantly positive for both single and married women, and the effect is realized in the long run, rather than short-run. In accordance with the “feminization of labor” literature, export orientation was found to be positively correlated with female labor force employment and participation. Further inference revealed, however, that a general positive effect is only observed in the case of single and/or younger women, whereas the benefits of exports can only be influential on married women's employment outcomes via the conventional female-employing sectors like textiles or food, and with a time lag. Moreover, for married women, there is no influence of export orientation on participation. Thus limited, but positive effects of export orientation in certain industries does not necessarily create an environment where married women would participate more. This indicates the continuity of the problem Turkey is facing regarding low female participation rates. Even for the single women, export orientation is no longer significant for employment during the crisis after controlling for GDP per capita in the province. The results point to the importance of a sustainable and high level of economic activity in achieving higher female participation/employment. Furthermore our results on the difference between single and married women clearly indicate the importance of the gender-based division of labor in the household, indicated by the slower and weaker response of married women to the macroeconomic changes. In order for women to be able to harvest the benefits of more favorable macro-conditions, there is also a need for a break away from the traditional gender based division of labor, which leads to the concentration of married women in domestic work, or at best informal practices centered around home-based self-employment. Such a change will also reflect itself onto the gender-based sectoral segregation and make the effects of structural changes more accessible for the majority of women.