‘Home-based work shaped by gender roles in Turkey’

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

Click to read the article in Turkish

"How could I go out to work? I have two small children and my husband works all day and comes back late in the evening.

"I do not have anybody from my family who can look after my children while I work. My husband's family is far from where we live now. So I am doing piecework and looking after my children at the same time.

"We live in a one-room flat which was transformed from a kind of storage room or dükkan (shop), so it is hard for me to have a relative with us to look after my children. I wish I could work in better paid work so we could buy our own flat and live better."

The above remarks have been uttered by a home-based worker in Turkey for a study conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

As part of its "Working from home: From invisibility to decent work" report issued to mark the 25th anniversary of its Home Work Convention No. 177, the ILO has also released a report on Turkey: "Home bounded - Global outreach: Home-based workers in Turkey" report prepared by Prof. Saniye Dedeoğlu from Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University.

Report focuses on two main groups

The report focuses on two categories of home-based workers in Turkey; industrial home-based pieceworkers and IT-enabled remote workers, who are commonly referred to in Turkey as "freelancers".

With an aim of exploring the current patterns and issues of these two categories, the report presents the situation and working practices of industrial home-based workers and freelance remote workers, specifically focusing on the issues of access to work, working arrangements, working hours, earnings, health and safety and work-life balance.

According to the report, the interviews conducted in İstanbul reveal that an analysis of the gendered nature of home-based work is necessary to unveil the values attached to piecework and digital remote work.

The findings of the report also show that that even social, cultural and economic distinctions between two groups, the lack of job security and decent working conditions as well as low bargaining power have resulted in their increased vulnerabilities in Turkey's labour markets.

'87 percent are unregistered'

Some of the findings from the Turkey report are as follows:

• In Turkey, the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) classifies homeworkers as workers whose workplace is home, and includes information on domestic work, home-based work and care work.
• In 2016, 2.6 percent (610,771) of all private-sector employees worked at home, of which women accounted for 89 percent.
• The female-dominated nature of homework in Turkey also manifests itself in the fact that 87 percent of all workers are unregistered and operating in the informal economy. Only 13 percent work in formal employment with social security coverage.
• The age distribution of homeworkers shows that 68.6 percent of them are above 40 years old. This is quite a high average when we compare it with the overall age distribution in the labour market.
• The educational attainment of homeworkers is aligned with the findings on age distribution: 49.6 percent have primary school education and 13.8 percent have no schooling. In total, this accounts for 63.4 percent of all homeworkers, demonstrating the low educational attainment of the homeworkers. Those having university and higher degrees are 9.3 percent of all homeworkers; they constitute the highly educated segment of workers working at home.
• The HLFS also reveals information regarding the sectoral distribution of work that takes place in the home. The most popular sectors are domestic workers (29 percent), manufacturing textiles (22 percent), services to buildings and landscape activities (17 percent) and manufacturing of apparel (10 percent).
• Traditional home-based piecework is mostly clustered in the categories of manufacturing of textiles (22 percent), of apparel (10 percent), of food products (3 percent), of leather and related products (2 percent) and other manufacturing activities (2 percent), which comes to a total of 39 percent of all homeworkers.

'A gendered division of labor'

• Homework dates back to pre-industrial times and is not a new phenomenon. In recent years, the interest has focused on the changing trends in industrial homework under the impact of the global reorganization of industrial production and in global value chains
• The focus on home-based piecework also reveals the manifestations of 'housewifization' of women in Turkey and of how gender ideologies are played out to shape women's work and labour.
• The male breadwinner model and 'patriarchal contract' are the determining factors of the gendered division of labour and institutionalized gender roles establish constraints on women's labour supply in Turkey.
• Home-based work is also examined as a form of informal work for women who are in need of work but cannot work outside due to their domestic roles and responsibilities or to patriarchal constraints keeping women at home. Therefore, home becomes a spatial meeting locus for women where their familial duties and roles are combined together with their income generation.
• Working at home has a contradictory effect on women's social status; it makes their life easier as their work is at home, but simultaneously has a negative effect as working from home reinforces their traditional roles of child and elderly care-giving and the performance of everyday household tasks (Aktas, 2013).

'Both are prone to vulnerability, precarity'

• Whether a freelancer or pieceworker, their jobs are prone to certain risks that increase the vulnerability and precariousness of being a home-based worker. For freelancers, the pay is more satisfactory because it is more than double the minimum wage and they have the potential to increase their earnings by taking on more work.
• Having limited coverage of social security and health insurance benefits is a common vulnerability that homeworkers experience in Turkey. It also underlines their dependency on their families and enforces patriarchal gender roles and relations in families.
• Turkish case shows that homeworkers have a weak organizational structure and collective action. The industrial pieceworkers have a weaker ability to organize and form collective action than freelancers. The informal work contracts, irregular workloads and isolation of homeworkers, hinders their capacity to act collectively.
• Homeworkers in Turkey, notably industrial homeworkers, but also elsewhere, are among the most vulnerable groups of workers with little opportunity to defend their rights or improve working conditions.
• Focusing on two different segments of homeworkers, namely industrial pieceworkers and online-based freelancers, has brought to light the advantages but also the insecurities and vulnerabilities associated with both types of workers.
• Although there are social, cultural and economic distinctions between these two groups, they both tend to face a lack of job security and poor working conditions as well as a low bargaining power that generates vulnerabilities.

(EMK/SD)