Accounting and Counting Housewives Work: Low-Income Migrant Women's Informal Income Generating Activities in Urban Turkey

Saniye Dedeoglu, University of Southampton

Urbanization in Turkey has resulted in housewifezation of women in urban areas. Rural-urban migration has been the main trend in housewifezation and led to women’s withdrawal from labor force participation. It is recorded that 19 million women are either housewives or not working. However, this does not mean that urban women are economically inactive. Rather, women are pushed towards informal activities, especially home-based ones that are recognized as the main areas of women’s economic activity in the labor market. The main purpose of the study is to review the evidence available from National Statistics as well as other studies on women and their involvement in the so-called informal sector. The paper will draw on different forms of informal activities that women engage in and that are missing from the records of National Statistics in Turkey.