MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

Department of Economics Seminar Series 

"The Gendered Relationship between Temporary, Informal Employment and Wages: Evidence from the Turkish Labor Market"

by

Anıl Duman

(Central European University)

Date: May 13, 2024 (Monday)

Time: 14:00

Synchronous Online Seminar

MS Teams Platform

MS Teams Link

Meeting ID: 246 506 859 070

Passcode: ZyU89E

Abstract

The paper examines the relationship between types of employment and wages by gender and gender pay gaps among permanent, temporary, and informal workers. There are substantial gender inequalities in bargaining, and these inequalities are argued to be more prevalent for temporary and informal jobs. Hence, we expect to see larger wage penalties for women in such positions. Moreover, we argue that the inverse association between wages and non-permanent contracts is larger for low paid women. To this end, we employ unconditional quantile regression techniques and counterfactual decomposition analysis, and account for selection bias. Our dataset is based on labor force surveys over the period of 2005-2019 in Turkey and focuses on private sector employees. The findings highlight the disproportionate impact of temporary and informal employment on female earnings and suggest that employment type can be a contributing factor to the gender pay gap in Turkey, particularly for low wage groups. Besides, we reveal that women in temporary and informal jobs earn significantly less than men, particularly at the lower end of distribution. A big part of the gender pay gap is attributable to returns to characteristics, or in other words residual. Hence, we conclude that female employees in Turkey are unfavorably treated in the labor market, which is likely to reflect their poorer bargaining power.