Determinants of the gender based differences in working hours in the Turkish labor market: Blinder-Oaxaca discrimination method

The purpose of this study is to analyze the longitudinal variation of the differences in the Turkish labor market working hours in terms of gender and various demographic variables by using the descriptive analysis of the Household Labor Force Survey of the Turkish Statistical Institute data between the 2000-2018 years and to analyze the determinants of the gender related variation in working hours, by using the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition method on the 2018 Household Labor Force Survey data. According to the initial descriptive analysis findings of the study, differences between the working hours of men and women in the Turkish labor market were observed. It has been determined that men work an average of forty-eight hours a week, and women work approximately forty hours a week, and the gender related difference in average working hours is approximately eight hours. However, over the years, decreases in working hours for both men and women draw attention. Blinder-Oaxaca analysis findings from the second phase of the study indicated that the differences in the working hours between genders in the Turkish labor market human capital are affected by variables such as age group, marital status, education level, formality, working style, income, number of employees, profession and industry, and also by unexplained variables such as discrimination as a result of varying treatment to men and women. It has been observed that the discrimination coefficient arising from the different treatment of women and men in the labor market is higher than the difference arising from the human capital. The human capital variables having the highest contribution to the discrimination coefficient are respectively; marital status, working style, and education level. The presence of the differences in the working hours between women and men in the labor market indicates that both social norms and labor market institutions are important in determining the working time, and also it would be enlightening to examine the average working hours by genders.