Social norms and gender equality: Analysing Syrian refugee inflows to Turkey

This study investigates the impact of 3.7 million inflows of Syrian refugees on social norms and the gender roles of native women in Turkey by treating the arrival of Syrian refugees as a quasi-natural experiment. I argue that this mass migration can affect the patriarchal norms in Turkey and gender role attitudes of Turkish women by changing the female employment dynamics and overall cultural diffusion. Using 2008, 2013 and 2018 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey data sets, this study relies on an instrumental variables strategy with a distance-based instrument. Our estimates show that refugee inflows negatively impacted both the labor market outcomes and gender role attitudes of native women. These outcomes support the labor market channel where a decline in financial freedom of women weakens their bargaining power in the household and makes them more submissive to social & gender norms. However, we also find a contradicting result showing a decrease in the tolerance levels of Turkish women for domestic violence which proves that although refugee inflows increased the imposed gender role attitudes, native women exhibits a strong attitude against intimate partner violence.