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Combating Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey. the Role of Women’S Economic Empowerment Aurélien Dasre, Angela Greulich, Inan Ceren

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Combating Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey. the Role of Women’S Economic Empowerment Aurélien Dasre, Angela Greulich, Inan Ceren Combating domestic violence against women in Turkey. The role of women’s economic empowerment Aurélien Dasre, Angela Greulich, Inan Ceren To cite this version: Aurélien Dasre, Angela Greulich, Inan Ceren. Combating domestic violence against women in Turkey. The role of women’s economic empowerment. 2017. halshs-01660703 HAL Id: halshs-01660703 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01660703 Submitted on 14 Dec 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Documents de Travail du Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne Combating domestic violence against women in Turkey. The role of women’s economic empowerment Aurélien DASRE, Angela GREULICH, Ceren INAN 2017.52 Maison des Sciences Économiques, 106-112 boulevard de L'Hôpital, 75647 Paris Cedex 13 http://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/ ISSN : 1955-611X Combating domestic violence against women in Turkey. The role of women’s economic empowerment. Aurélien Dasre1£ Angela Greulich* Ceren Inan¥ Abstract This paper identifies motors and barriers for combatting domestic violence against women in Turkey – a country where modernism and conservatism are in constant interplay. We combine information from the Demographic Health Surveys and the Turkish Domestic Violence Survey and distinguish between controlling behavior, physical and sexual violence. Our empirical analysis tests how far a woman’s intra-household decision making power (as measured by her education, her activity status, her income etc.) bears the potential to reduce her risk of experiencing domestic violence in Turkey. The analysis takes into account contextual factors as well as partner and household characteristics. We find that women’s participation in the labor market does not, on its’ own, reduce women’s risk of experiencing intimate partner violence, but an egalitarian share of economic resources between spouses is likely to protect women against domestic violence. This finding has two important implications: First, higher education enabling women to access formal wage employment allows women not only to gain economic independence, but also to freely choose their partner. Second, unstable economic conditions that harm earning opportunities for men are an important risk factor for couples to experience conflicts that can result in domestic violence against women. Against the background of the recent economic crisis that comes hand in hand with a backlash of gender and family norms in Turkey, our results highlight the need of policy action in this field. Keywords: Violence against women, gender, economics JEL Classification Numbers: J1, J12, J16, J18 1 £ Demographer, Associate Professor at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, Paris (Cresppa-GTM) *Economist, Associate Professor at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris (Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne) ¥ Demographer, Researcher at the French Ministry of Education and Research (SIES), Paris 1 Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - 2017.52 1. Introduction Turkey is an emerging country with important differences in economic and social development between Eastern and Western regions and between high and low income groups. Between 2001 and 2014, GDP per capita in Turkey has more than doubled. In parallel, life expectancy, health insurance coverage, compulsory school enrolment and higher education attendance have risen, while poverty has been decreasing. Men and women both benefit from these advances, but women still lag behind men in terms of economic empowerment. Women are still less educated than men in Turkey and they have less access to the formal labor market. Progress in terms of gender equality can be observed but is slow in Turkey, and over the last decade, the public policy discourse has been rather regressive. Their economic dependence on men makes women vulnerable, not only in financial terms. The prevalence of domestic violence is still much higher in Turkey compared to the European average2. Despite important policy action, the high and stagnating prevalence rates show that combatting domestic violence against women in Turkey is a difficult undertaking (see also Tozlu and Göksel, 2016). When investigating motors and barriers for combatting domestic violence, it is thus necessary to take into account the specific context of Turkey, where progressive policy reforms coexist with dominant conservative gender and family norms. In order to reduce domestic violence and to increase gender equality, , a series of legal reforms and policies were undertaken over the last years, initiated by the 2001 New Civil Code and reinforced by NGO’s participation and important media coverage., The Penal Code with regard to violence against women and gender inequalities was reformed, including criminalization of sexual assault within marriage and life imprisonment for “honor” killings. Two National Action Plans for combating domestic violence against women were developed. Furthermore, a Law on Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence against women (law no 6284) was set up and Violence Prevention and Monitoring Centers were established. To take into account the context-dependency of risk factors of domestic violence, it is important to have available a large set of reliable information not only of women, but also of partners, of the household and of the family environment. To make our analysis of socioeconomic determinants of domestic violence in Turkey as comprehensive as possible, we therefore combine different data sources, notably the Demographic and Health Survey (waves 2003, 2008 and 2013) and the Domestic Violence Survey (waves 2008 and 2014). Besides, background information is given by mobilizing, amongst other sources, the Turkish Family Structure Survey (TAYA, waves 2006 and 2011). Our empirical analysis tests in how far a woman’s intra-household decision making power (as measured by her education, her activity status, her income etc.) bears the potential to reduce her risk of experiencing domestic violence in Turkey. We hereby take into account contextual factors and partner and household characteristics. 2 The prevalence of domestic violence (last 12 months) is 11% in Turkey in 2014 and 4% on average in 28 EU countries in 2012. The prevalence of lifetime exposition to domestic violence is 39% in Turkey and 22% in the EU 28. According to a recent UNFPA report, Turkey has the highest prevalence of physical violence and one of the highest prevalence of sexual and psychological violence amongst East European and Central Asian countries (UNFPA 2015).The percentage of ever married women declare being subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by their husband or intimate partner for the last 12 months decreased only slightly from 13.7% in 2008 to 11% in 2014 in Turkey. 2 Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - 2017.52 The advantage of our econometric analysis in comparison to the available descriptive statistics is to disentangle the factors which are potentially linked to the risk of experiencing domestic violence. Our descriptive analysis shows that women who are likely to experience domestic violence are also those who have higher probabilities of getting married very early in life, who are less educated, with less economical resources, living in conservative families and/or in less developed Eastern regions, and are with a partner who is much older than them. At the same time, their more educated, high income, liberal and/or Western women are less likely to experience domestic violence. The problem is that all these socio-economic and demographic factors are correlated. Is it because a woman is higher educated, because she lives in the West or because she is gaining her own money that she has a lower risk of experiencing domestic violence? Our econometric analysis shows which of the determinants are most important. We will see that controlling for demographic characteristics actually reinforces the validity of the socioeconomic determinants of domestic violence. The focus on female economic empowerment allows discussing some policy implications not only for reacting to but also for preventing domestic violence. Against the background of the recent economic crisis that comes hand in hand with a backlash of gender and family norms in Turkey, our results highlight the urgency of policy action in this field. The article is structured as follows: Section 1 provides background information of the Turkish context on economic and social development, with an emphasis on recent legal reforms and policies on gender equality and women’s human rights. Section 2 presents the definition, documentation and measures of domestic violence against women used in this article. Section 3 gives a descriptive overview of awareness and prevalence of domestic violence in Turkey, while in section 4, we empirically investigate the socio-economic determinants of domestic violence in Turkey. Finally, we conclude by discussing some policy implications and ways of future research. 2. Contextual framework: Women’s status in the Turkish society Turkey is
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