Women’s Labor Force Participation and Inequality in Turkey

The increasing income inequalities in many societies since the 1980s are generally considered within the framework of concepts such as globalization, international trade, technological changes, or transformations in the distribution of income and wages. However, the significant increase in women’s participation in the labor force represents another necessary social and economic transformation since the 1980s apart from the dramatic increases in inequalities. Some qualitative changes have also followed as women become a segment of waged labor in increasing numbers: for example, the feminization of the labor market. The emergence of women as paid labor and the contribution of their earnings to family incomes have undoubtedly caused transformations in income and wage distribution in many societies. This paper begins with this stated perspective to explore the impact women’s employment has exerted on income inequalities in Turkey. Two distinct inequality measures, the Gini coefficient and the Theil index, are used based on a literature study to observe in detail the effects of women’s labor force participation on income inequalities. The ARDL Bounds Testing methodology is employed with the time-series data (1988–2015) to accomplish the stated purpose. The estimation results reveal that the labor participation of women has reduced income inequalities in Turkey in the long run.