The report “Empowering Women through Cooperatives in Turkey: Legal and Structural Strategies” by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Türkiye was launched at an event in Ankara on 15 September 2022 to publicise the findings.

Representing an output and continuation of ILO’s work to empower women through cooperatives and enable them to participate more in employment and cooperative management, the Report offers four distinct but complementary strategies formulated in the framework of analysis of problems and international good practices to support women’s active participation in cooperatives.

“Cooperatives are important for women’s access to decent jobs”

Delivering the opening remarks at the event, Mr. Numan Özcan, Director of the ILO Office for Türkiye, underlined that ILO stood as the sole specialized agency on cooperatives in the United Nations System, and said: “Cooperatives are structures sine qua non for decent work for all. The cooperative movement should be further encouraged to ensure that particularly women can work in safe and secure conditions.”

“Cooperatives are organizations where women can work under decent conditions while they also contribute to enhancing women’s employment in various sectors through facilitating women’s access to or directly providing affordable services including particularly care services.

Mr. Özcan noted that cooperatives as local models of organization ensure that women participate in employment and public life, are empowered socio-economically, generate collective solutions, and thereby access to basic income and opportunities of organization.

“ILO Recommendation is a beacon for strengthening cooperatives”

“Women’s representation in cooperatives still remains limited although some progress has occurred in recent years. Therefore, it is necessary to develop organization and management models that can ensure women’s more egalitarian and democratic participation within cooperatives.

Legal, social and economic transformations are needed to reinforce women’s empowerment through cooperatives. In this context, multi-lateral cooperation and collaboration are critically important as indicated in ILO’s Promotion of Cooperatives Recommendation, 2002 (No. 193).”

“The Report recommends strategies and means for women’s empowerment”

The report focuses on investigating solutions to how cooperatives can meet the needs of women both as beneficiaries, partners and employees of cooperatives, and offers recommendations for a set of elaborate legislation, strategies and means that aim to empower women socio-economically.

ILO has long been working on how cooperatives can play more active roles in the access of all workers to decent jobs in the context of empowering women through cooperatives, ensuring higher participation of women in employment through cooperatives, involving women in cooperative management, enabling women to better access to such resources and services as training, finances and childcare provided by cooperatives.

As a theoretical output of such work, the Report was prepared on the basis of data derived from a comprehensive desk study and interviews with experts on the cooperative movement and representatives from women’s cooperatives. The Report offers four distinct but complementary strategies in the framework of problem analysis and international good practices both in enhancing women’s active involvement in mixed cooperatives and promoting women’s cooperatives.

The Report was authored by Dr. Ms. Ayşe Gönüllü Atakan and Dr. Ms. Aslı Çoban under the under the “More and Better Jobs for Women Phase II Programme” implemented by the ILO Office for Türkiye with funding from Sweden.

Members of women cooperatives supported by ILO shared their experience

At the event “Decent Jobs for Women Through Cooperatives: Strategies and Concrete Practices” moderated by Ms. Ayşe Emel Akalın, Gender and Social Dialogue Officer at ILO Office for Türkiye, Dr. Ms. Ayşe Gönüllü Atakan, the author of the report on cooperatives, shared information on the report preparation process and recommendations on four key strategies offered by the report.

Dr. Ms. Ayşe Gönüllü Atakan said: “Cooperatives are important means for empowering women through access to decent jobs. Legal and structural transformations are needed however both to sustainably incorporate women’s cooperatives in the economy, and ensure women’s involvement in mixed cooperatives for gender equality.”

The event also featured an experience-sharing session moderated by Ms. Ayşe Turunç Kankal, Livelihoods Officer at ILO Office for Türkiye currently assigned to the project “Supporting Resilience and Social Cohesion with Decent Livelihood Opportunities” under ILO’s “Decent Work Opportunities for Refugees and Host Communities in Turkey”, programme where women from Kinali Eller, Cemre and Meryem Women’s Cooperatives who joined the labour force through support provided to women’s cooperatives under ILO projects shared their experience in cooperative activities.

Migrant women who joined the world of work through cooperatives expressed that they were liberated socio-economically as well as felt stronger due to involvement in production and collaboration.