One of the major starting points for the project is the phenomenon of “growth without employment” which is being observed after the 2001 crisis as underlined in the 2007 report “State of Women’s Employment in Turkey” prepared for ILO Ankara Office by Gülay Toksöz.  Turkey enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 7.7% in the period 2002-2007. This satisfactory record in economic growth, however, was not translated to any significant growth in employment. Indeed, the net average annual rate of growth in employment in the same period remained under 1%. It is well established that the absence of high increases in unemployment as a result of growth without employment is due to working-age women largely remaining outside the labour force. As stated earlier, women’s labour force participation is steadily falling and as evidenced by the experience of the last 30 years, this tendency bears the risk of turning into a chronic feature.

Women’s very low labour force participation rates were used as a starting point in launching the project to promote women’s employment in Turkey with two overarching goals:

• At province level, improving the capacity of İŞKUR personnel and social partners and contributing to the adoption of gender sensitive approaches in women’s employment,
• Enhancing the employability of women by referring unemployed women registered with the İŞKUR in pilot provinces to active labour market policies and developing a model for ensuring gender equality in employment.

With these in mind, labour force participation rates of women were examined at province level while designing the project and based on this examination three target provinces were identified. Labour force participation rates of women in these provinces were as follows in 2006:

Table 1: Labour force participation and employment rates of women in the age group 15-29 in target provinces (2006 data)

Source: TÜİK Household Labour Data, 2006

At this stage where the TUİK 2006 Household Labour Force data were considered and province level data were compared, it was decided to select Ankara, as one of the pilot provinces for its relatively higher than country average values in women’s labour force participation, and provinces of Gaziantep and Konya whose status as regional focus of economic development was accompanied by women’s labour force participation levels lower than the country average.

• In line with objectives stated above, outcomes expected from the project can be gathered under three headings: Improving the technical capacity of İŞKUR directorates and social partners in target provinces particularly in the implementation of active labour market policies geared to promoting the employment of women and their participation to labour force.
• Creation of mechanisms to be monitored by local governance institutions to enhance women’s employment in target provinces.
• Promoting young women’s employability in target provinces through vocational training and ensuring their participation to labour force.

Throughout the Project many activities under these main headings were carried out and project activities were successfully completed within the envisaged time period (See Project Outcomes).