A conflicting approach

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as we know, never misses an opportunity to insist that families should have at least three children.

In recent years, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has reluctantly come to acknowledge that increasing women's labor-force participation, which at 31.9 percent in June remains one of the lowest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and is half the EU average, is necessary to sustain the country's economic growth. Devising measures to promote women's employment is clearly a step in the right direction. Several factors, including lower education levels, contribute to the low level of female participation in the workforce. Social security incentives to entice employers to hire more women introduced in 2008 and in 2011 appear to have had a positive impact on the numbers.

The latest plans to increase maternity leave and introduce several other measures that will make it easier for women to combine work and family have met some resistance in the business community. The head of Ankara's Chamber of Commerce, Nurettin Özdebir, caused a controversy when he said the new measures considered would discourage, rather than encourage, employers from hiring women. His remarks were widely condemned, but they reflect a patriarchal approach and a perception -- that the government has done little to dispel -- that women alone are responsible for raising the next generation.

The government needs to consult employers as well as women's groups as it fine-tunes its policy. What matters is not just to boost numbers, but also to ensure that women can get fair employment conditions, that they benefit from the same pay as their male colleagues for the same work and enjoy the same social protections. So far, this is far from being the case. Too many women still work without social security, and vocational training programs tend to push them toward women-only employment areas, such as hairdressing or care work.

If the Turkish government wants to increase women's employment while also supporting demographic growth, it will require more than incentives and legislation. What is also needed is a radical shift in the perception of gender roles and a revolution in the home.

In a report published in May, the Women's Labor and Employment Initiative (KEİG) Platform pointed out that Turkish women do more unpaid care work than their peers in 30 other OECD and non-OECD countries. According to 2006 data cited in the report, while Turkish women aged 15-64 spend on average five hours 17 minutes a day on household and care work, men's involvement is limited to 51 minutes a day. The gap between the unpaid work time of Turkish women and men is four times higher than in the EU, and the ratio is even higher in poor households, where a greater share of the burden falls on women's shoulders.

Social change, women's growing desire to step out of the home and economic necessity are slowly but steadily drawing women into the workforce. Yet Turkey's conservative government is also intent on maintaining the social status quo. We never hear politicians suggest that men, too, need to shoulder their share of the child care or go shopping while their wives are at work.

The contradiction between the AK Party's conservative approach, which focuses on women's role as mothers, and its recognition that the country's economy needs their production power outside the home inevitably results in conflicting policies. As long as women are expected to carry alone the entire burden of the household, many of them will find it hard to enter the workforce, and those who do often do so at huge personal cost.