Female Employment as a Reserve Army of Labor: Case of Turkey, 1988-2013

This work considers the role of female employment in the “industrial reserve army of labor” on the base of Turkish experience between 1988 and 2013. Unlike previous studies in which the relationship is investigated at the sectoral level, this study initially considers demographic categories and illustrates alternative utilization from reserve army of labor and the current status of female employment in Turkey accordingly. To this end, Ordinary Least Squares Method (OLS) is employed in order to detect whether female employment has higher volatility than total employment. According to the empirical results, some categories of female employment are more volatile than total employment and demographical categories are found to be more significant than production related categories. This fact shows that there are strong fundamental obstacles such as marriage institution, part-time female employment, ownership in production and lower education levels, which constraint female proletarianization in Turkey