PART-TIME WORK IN TURKEY

Abstract

In this paper, the presence and extent of part-time employment in the Turkish labour market is examined. We attempt to provide the theoretical explanations of part-time work -including the theories in terms of both demand and supply - observed in many empirical studies. It is found that although, part-time work is a recent phenomena in Turkey it has started to grow after the 1990s and is assumed to increase in the future. In addition, part-time employment is largely dominated by females in Turkey as in most of the other countries. We suggest that although part-time employment has some drawbacks in the labour market, in fact it has some advantages as well; it stimulates employment, stimulates flexibility in companies, and helps the combination of paid and unpaid work, training, leisure, and civic activities. Therefore, if equal treatment of full-timers and part-timers would be established in the law and if it is freely chosen by workers it seems a good option for people who do not want to work full-time and thus it is worth encouraging.