Exploring recipes for higher female labour force participation in Turkey: insights from Southern Europe with a qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece achieved remarkable increases in their FLFP rates as of the 1980s. Turkey, however, experienced constant decline for decades, and is still featuring sluggish rates. With such sluggish rates, Turkey has by far the lowest FLFP level for a very long time in Europe. Hence, with a configurational comparative analysis and comparative-historical case analysis, I aim to derive lessons for Turkey from other South European countries for the achievement of higher FLFP levels. I do so by relying on traditional common traits shared by these five countries of Southern Europe. Owing to the comparative advantage of exploring multiple configurational causation based on small-n comparison with the suitably comparable cases, this dissertation, consequently, unravels the South European pathways for a steeper FLFP rise. Such exploration relies on the application of the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as a method in this study. Following the analysis, I show that there exist two causal pathways to rising FLFP in Southern Europe. Either strong left party rule (Pathway I) or increasing childcare enrolment and university education among women and an expanding service sector (Pathway II) can bring about steeper rise of FLFP in Turkey. This study shows the role of left parties in rising FLFP in Southern Europe, which has been rarely featured in the literature. Additionally, this research, relying an analysis on complex causal conjunctures, also shows the necessity of presence of conditions existing together to pull more women in the labour force.