HEADSCARVES AND FERTILITY OF WOMEN IN TURKEY
Authors : Zeynep B. UĞUR
Pages : 5-26
View : 66 | Download : 82
Publication Date : 2022-12-31
Article Type : Research Article
Abstract :The enforcement of the headscarf ban for many years blocked the education and career paths for the majority of women in Turkey. A large literature shows that there are significant relationships between women’s labor force participation, educational attainment and fertility. This ban can lead women who does not take off their headscarf, to an early motherhood path. In this study, we firstly document the childbearing behavior of women depending on their wearing headscarves. We also examine the impact of the headscarf ban on women’s fertility. As we have data for the whole fertility history of women, we can analyze the impact of the headscarf ban using a methodology which is in spirit of Difference in Difference (DID) estimation. For this purpose, we utilize individual level data from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted by Hacettepe Institute of Population Studies in 2003, 2008 and 2013. Our results show that women with headscarves have, on average, 0.2 more children than women who do not wear headscarves. Even when we confine the sample to women with high school or tertiary education, headscarved women have statistically significantly higher number of children. However, in the post-1997 period, when the ban was strictly enforced, no increase was detected in the number of births for women wearing headscarves. Our results show the difficulty of fostering higher fertility even among religious individuals when their other options that could be a barrier for childbearing are removed.Keywords : başörtüsü, dindarlık, başörtüsü yasağı, doğurganlık, Türkiye