Gender disparities in Turkey remainconsiderable despite Turkish government’s recent publicpolicy initiatives aimed at increasing gender equity inTurkey. Overall gender equity ranking of Turkey in thegender gap 2012 report. Gender equity is identified as a keyarea in the 2012-2015 country partnership strategy of theWorld Bank Group (WBG) in Turkey. One of the projectsinitiated to move WBG’s gender agenda in Turkey further isthe technical assistance project on promoting gender equityin labor markets and entrepreneurship. Using novel datasets,this study aims to contribute to the project throughproviding a better understanding of different dimensions ofthe gender gap in employment and particularly earnings. Keyfindings of this paper are as follows: (i) the gap betweenmen and women in participation emerges with the early exitof women, particularly those low educated, after marriage;(ii) partly due to exit of low educated women aftermarriage, female employees, on average, have less workexperience than male employees; (iii) compared to men, womenwork in higher paying sectors, sub-sectors, and firms withinsub-sectors. Yet, women earn less than the men working inthe same firm; (iv) female employees are more concentratedin larger firms especially in the East and the North regionsof the country; and (v) once all observable characteristicsare taken into account, it is hard to argue that earningsdiscrimination against women in the formal labor market ofTurkey is large. Section one gives introduction. Section twoand three are dedicated to the investigation of gender gapin labor market participation. Section four and five analyzethe gender gap in earnings. Section six presents conclusionand policy implications.
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