Microcredit practices in the development of women's employment in Turkey

The participation of the women in the workforce is an important subject with respect to different aspects such as increasing the educational level of the women, improving their status within the society, acquisition of the legal rights and training new generations for maintaining the existence by the society in addition to ensuring the economical and social development. At this point, the participation of the women in the workforce is influenced by different conditions such as the situation of the economy, presence of the working opportunities, point of view of the society at the women employment and the roles of the women at home. Because of this reason, the women employment is a multidimensional interdisciplinary working area covering the economics, working economy, sociology and psychology science branches.Just like many areas, the situation of the women in workforce is not under the same conditions and in the same structure like the men. The rates of participation in the workforce, salary levels of the women are lower and the rate of unemployment is higher and the career opportunities are rather limited in comparison with the men. In addition to the presence of such conditions, at the same time with their regular working course, the women are obliged to grow children, deal with the house staff and ensure the subsistence of the family, which are called as the dual role. In spite of the presence of these conditions, the women become successful and the women employment increases all over the world. However, the situation in Türkiye is not same with the entire world. Türkiye is among ten countries with the lowest rate of participation of the women in the workforce all over the world.In order to increase the low women employment in Türkiye, although the projects have been implemented by the private sector and non-governmental organizations and some policies have been produced by the government particularly beginning from the 1990?s, the rates of participation of the women in the workforce decreased. In this framework, micro credit has a potential of solution as it is defined as a policy to prevent poverty for increasing the women employment. Micro credit is a financial tool directed at ensuring the women to work to their own accounts, by means of supporting the women by means of a refundable and sustainable credit. The employment of the women is ensured and they are involved in the economy through micro credit and it is aimed at increasing the national income with the employment created. In this study, micro credit is examined as a tool to increase the women employment in Türkiye and it is tried to determine the participation of the micro credit projects which have been applied in Türkiye to the women employment.