“Job Opportunities for Women" meetings is held in Kahramanmaraş

TÜSİAD, in collaboration with the Ministry of Family and Social Policy and the World Bank, organized a meeting on the “Job Opportunities for Women” on April 20th, 2013 in Kahramanmaraş. The meeting was the sixth activity in the context of the “Anatolia, Step by Step” series of seminars.

The series of meetings “Anatolia, Step by Step - Job Opportunities for Women”, are organized in order to contribute to the efforts for creating awareness about gender equality and participation of women in social life, and particularly their participation in education and working life.

The opening addresses of the meeting were delivered by of Ms. Fatma Şahin, Minister of Family and Social Policy, Mr. Muharrem Yılmaz, President of the Board of Directors of TÜSİAD, Mr. Florian Fichtl, Deputy Country Director for Turkey of the World Bank, Mr. Mustafa Poyraz, Mayor of Kahramanmaraş and Mr. Şükrü Kocatepe, Governor of Kahramanmaraş. Ms. Aşkın Asan, Deputy Minister of Family and Social Policy, and Ms. Nur Ger, President of the Gender Equality working Group of TÜSİAD made also a speech.

In his address Mr. Muharrem Yılmaz emphasized that TÜSİAD attach a great importance to the participation of woman to the economic and political life. He spoke as follows: “’We cannot fly to the future with one wing.’ If we do not utilize the power of our women, or half of the potential of our country, we can only walk towards our targets while we could fly. And this means that we keep being behind the developed countries. This means also losing the opportunity of offering a brighter future to our children. There are many women who want to work or establish their own business. We have to encourage these women. Education is crucial for the economic activities of the women. Educated women contribute a great amount in their economically active lives. Therefore coordinated effort of the public, private and civil society institutions to support women is a must.” Mr. Muharrem Yılmaz, President of the Board of Directors of TÜSİAD also reminded that the tradition of assigning all domestic responsibility to the women is an impediment against employment of women, and many women are forced to quit their job as soon as they have their first child, and hence nurseries and day care centers should be made more available.

During the panel discussion moderated by Ms. Şirin Payzın, Program Producer at the CNNTurk, working women and women entrepreneurs who benefited from Income Generating Project Supports, Micro Credits, and various incentives from cooperatives, İŞKUR and KOSGEB shared their experience.

The first meeting of the “Anatolia, Step by Step” series of seminars was organized on March 17th, 2012 in Gaziantep, the second on June 28th, 2012 in Trabzon, the third on November 10th, 2012 in Erzurum, the fourth on January 12th, 2013 in Bursa, and the fifth on February 16th, 2013 in Nevşehir.