The role of women's employment in economic growth and development in Turkey

In today's world, women's participation in economic life has become more than just an individual issue. Women's employment, which is critical for societies in terms of economic growth, development and sustainability, is also an important tool in the fight against gender inequality. Women's participation in the labor force can affect a country's economic performance and accelerate social transformation. Turkey, as a historically, culturally and economically diverse country, provides an important case for understanding the role of women's employment on economic growth and development. Turkey's economic development in recent years has been paralleled by an increase in women's labor force participation rate. It is important to examine the net impact of this increase on economic growth and the contribution of women's employment to sustainable development goals. In this context, this study aims to empirically examine the impact of women's employment on economic growth and development in Turkey. For this purpose, ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Test) test method was used to reveal the relationship between variables. As a result of the analysis, a positive and significant relationship was found between women's employment and both economic growth and economic development in the short run in line with the literature. According to the long-run ARDL results, a positive relationship was found between women's employment and economic growth and economic development, but it was found to be statistically insignificant at the 10% significance level. These results are expected in developing countries like Turkey. In particular, the lack of formalization of women's employment leads to a low female employment rate and, accordingly, to very low and/or statistically insignificant coefficients. With the developing technology, it is important to increase women's employment and to register working women in the economic system. In order for Turkey to benefit more from global developments, it can be recommended that women's employment should be increased and employed women should be officially registered. Increasing economic growth and development are among the main goals of countries. Increasing women's employment rates by promoting social transformation and implementing policies to reduce gender inequality can make a significant contribution to the realization of this goal. Keywords: Female labour force participation rate , Inflation, Growth, Export, Import.