The "Woman in Statistics" bulletin, which encompasses employment statistics, education ratios and women’s contribution to social life in Türkiye, was published Monday through the data collected by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
Days ahead of International Women’s Day, the data on the female population strives to shed light on the rate of women employed across the country and provide detailed data on subjects including literacy, the ratio between men and women employed, and employment rates across 81 provinces.
According to the Address Based Population Registration System (ADNKS) results, the female population in Türkiye was 42.57 million, and the male population stood at 42.70 million in 2022.
The overall statistics that shed light on education in Türkiye point out that in the population of 25 and above, the number of people who graduated from higher education institutions was 23%. In comparison, this data stood at 9.8% in 2008.
Based on gender, it was found that workforce participation of those aged 15 years and older was 32.8% for women, while it stood at 70.3% for men.
According to the survey, it was found that the work inclusion rate raised proportionally with the educational level. Thus, it was found that women with an education level below high school accounted for 25.3% of the general number of women working, and 32.5% of high school graduates were employed. In comparison, 67.6% of women who received a university education were officially engaged in 2021. The survey also showed that the rate among illiterate women was only 12.8%, showing a slight increase according to last year’s data when this rate marked 12.4%.
Statistics shared show that the northwestern region of Türkiye, namely the cities Tekirdağ, Edirne and Kırklareli, had the highest employment rate in 2021 with 52%, while the lowest rate was seen in the southern, southeastern provinces of Mardin, Batman, Şırnak and Siirt. When it comes to women’s employment rate, however, the labor force survey indicates that the Black Sea region and its provinces (Trabzon, Ordu, Giresun, Rize, Artvin and Gümüşhane) host the highest numbers of women employed across the country, with 36.8%
These provinces were followed by Kastamonu, Çankırı and Sinop, where employment rates were seen at 35.6%.
Regarding part-time jobs, the latest statistics revealed that women in Türkiye outpace their male colleagues with a part-time employment rate of 16.7% compared to 7% in the male population.
Based on the comparisons of figures, the number of deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) provided by the Foreign Ministry in 2022, 17.3% of deputies were women, while the number of female ambassadors has reached 27.2%. Compared to 2011, when these statistics were at 11.9%, the number of women representatives significantly increased.
In education, the rate of women employed in positions of tenured teachers in high school education in the 2021-2022 school year was 33.2% compared to the 27.6% recorded in 2010-2011. On the other hand, the number of female university professors stood at 40.2%, while the rate of women working in the general teaching staff was 50.8%.
According to the Family Structure Survey results, when the individuals’ perceptions of women’s contributions were examined in 2021, the rate of those who think that women’s work ethic and their contribution to social life are valuable was 82.6%.
The recent statistics on marriage point out that the average age for women who officially married in 2022 is 25.6, while the average age of marriage for men is 28.2. The province with the highest average age for first marriage was Tunceli, with 29.7 years for women and 32.3 years for men. On the other side, the area with the lowest average age for a first marriage for women was Ağrı at 22.7 years and Şanlıurfa at 26.2 years for men.
The latest statistics also provided insight into online shopping habits within the population, finding that the number of women who prefer online purchases is 42.7%.