Female Labor Force Participation and Economic Development in Developing Countries: Case Study of Turkey

In this research project, we explore the factors that influence women\u27s labor force participation(WLFP) in developing regions through a case study of Turkey. Several researchers claim that WLFP exhibits a U-shape during the process of economic development. U-shaped hypothesis proposed that WLFP decreases in the early stages of industrialization, and increases again once women acquire skills and education needed to find jobs in non-agricultural sectors. Through regression analysis we found that U-shaped pattern exists for Turkey\u27s different regions. This also proved that there are large differences in economic development of regions in Turkey. Our study indicated that lack of investment, and opportunity cost of working for women are hindering both economic development and WLFP. We recommend policy makers to attach women employment incentives to stimulus packages, invest on tourism, bring child care subsidies, and complete the roads for connecting Anatolian regions to domestic and foreign markets. We also found that in Metropolitan regions, there is a labor market matching problem where high school graduate women gradually quit labor force. To solve the matching problem, we recommend policy makers to extend vocational and technical high school programs in Metropolitan regions and attract more females to these programs