An online meeting was held on 12 January 2021 with the participation of relevant parties to finalize the “Report on Promoting Women's Employment through Inter-Institutional Collaboration: Practices of Early Childhood Care and Education Services” prepared jointly by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Turkey and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to promote women’s employment.

The lack of accessible and adequate childcare services and unpaid care work being mostly expected of women stand out as one of the barriers to women’s employment. Consequently, the report prepared under the “More and Better Jobs for Women” Programme implemented by ILO with funding from Sweden aims to contribute to increasing women’s participation in the labour force and working in decent conditions in line with the programme priorities.

Based on comprehensive field studies, legislative analyses and review of the good practices on early childhood care and education services in Turkey and in the world, the report highlights practices of Organized Industry Zones (OIZs), municipalities and trade unions potentially sustainable and fit for the Turkish context, offers policy recommendations to scale up such practices in Turkey.

“Report focuses on most sustainable methods for Turkey”

Ms. Özen Tümer, Gender Programme Coordinator of EBRD, stated that, in the pursuit of promoting women’s employment and gender equality, two entities cooperated and produced the report that explored the most practicable and sustainable methods for early childhood care and education models for Turkey.

Tümer expressed that the objective was to promote women’s participation in the labour force through private sector and municipal services.

“Public investment and social dialogue essential for accessible childcare services”

Ms. Ebru Özberk Anlı, Senior Programme Officer, noted that the inadequacy of accessible childcare services is one of the biggest barriers to women’s entry and stay in the labour force, which also adversely affected women’s work-life balance.

Ms. Özberk said: “Therefore, childcare services should be accessible to all children and parents. To that end, it is crucially important to increase public investments and use the social dialogue mechanism whereby all relevant parties participate and contribute. Thereby, we will achieve a more egalitarian world of work and decent working conditions.”

The report’s authors, Prof.Dr Saniye Dedeoğlu, Yasemin Sırali and Dr. Aslı Şahankaya, provided an overview and methodology of the report.

Report produced through inter-institutional collaboration and social dialogue

Ms. Dedeoğlu informed that they first engaged in a baseline analysis, then held interviews with various private and public sector entities, local governments, trade unions and confederations to identify good practices.

She said: “We examined whether such practices could be scaled up in our country through laws, and concluded that some practices could be developed and scaled up through cooperation.”

Ms. Sırali, one of the authors, underlined the challenges posed by the three practices (OIZ, municipal and trade union) that stood out in terms of scalability, whereas Ms. Şahankaya presented the results of the survey on early childhood care services in times of COVID-19, included in the report as a distinct study.

At the meeting, the participants shared their views and suggestions including particularly setting up a joint fund, advocacy and awareness-raising activities on the importance of early childhood care services, and using resources efficiently in a coordinated manner.