There is no way for us to repay this debt. We are living in a system where the gap between the cost of living and our wages widens by the day, forcing us to pile new debts on top of old ones that continue to grow with interest. So we must ask: Are we truly the ones in debt?
According to the TURKSTAT data released in September 2025, Turkey’s labor force participation rate stood at 53.5%, with women making up only 35.7% of the workforce. Employment rates reveal an even sharper gender gap: 66.3% for men compared to just 31.8% percent for women. Although the narrowly defined female unemployment rate for this period was reported as 11.1%, the “broadly defined female unemployment rate,” which includes women who have stopped searching for work despite needing a job, have lost hope of finding employment, or are underemployed due to time-related constraints, is significantly higher. According to data published in Altınbaş University’s 2024 volume Emeğin Kadın Suretleri (Women’s Forms of Labor), broad-based female unemployment reaches 32.9%. Women also earn, on average, 15% less than men and are disproportionately concentrated in labor-intensive and low-skilled jobs.[i]
According to figures announced by Türk-İş, the cost of living for a single person in September 2025 was 36,305 TL. In the same year, a single woman earning the minimum wage would have only 22,104.67 TL at her disposal. This means she would need to take out a loan amounting to 14,201 TL each month –and annualy 170,412 TL– just to meet her basic living expenses. This financial strain triggers a downward spiral for women: falling behind on credit card payments, opening an account at another bank and getting another credit card simply to pay the minimum balance of the previous one and thus becoming indebted to yet another bank, sinking under continuously rising, unmanageable debts, eventually having all cards blocked, banks selling the accumulated debt to collection agencies, being relentlessly harassed by law firms, and facing ongoing enforcement proceedings. If she manages to keep her job, a quarter of her wages may be garnished due to outstanding debts, leaving her with even less income and forcing her to borrow yet again. As rent and other essential costs become impossible to meet under these deductions, eviction becomes a looming threat. With nowhere left to turn, she may ultimately find herself unhoused and unable to secure paid employment.
There is no way for us to repay this debt. We are living in a system where the gap between the cost of living and our wages widens by the day, forcing us to pile new debts on top of old ones that continue to grow with interest. So we must ask: Are we truly the ones in debt?
There was a time when a university student with a scholarship could cover accomodation fees and basic monthly expenses. Today, that is unthinkable. Studying while holding a part-time job is no longer a viable option. When even the minimum wage fails to meet the cost of living, no one can realistically believe that earnings from a part-time job would be enough to survive.
We are at a time when majority of the population earns minimum wage and working conditions gradually deteriorate. Even when earning the minimum wage, working a regular 9-to-5 job remains an unattainable dream for many women. Most available jobs operate on exhausting shift systems: six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, often without the right to sit down, and with no overtime pay. Suppose a woman spends 2–3 hours each day commuting. Add eight hours of sleep. That leaves barely two hours. With no budget to eat out regularly, is there any time left to cook? Can household chores be done in those remaining minutes? If a faucet breaks, is there time or money to call a plumber? Can she meet friends and have a conversation? Is there any time left for herself at all?
These are times when it is becoming increasingly difficult for a woman to live on her own. Many are forced to choose between paying rents far beyond their means or facing threats of eviction from their landlords. Consider the average rents announced for February 2025. Setting aside districts such as Kadıköy, Şişli, Beşiktaş, and Beyoğlu, where rents are already known to be very high, the situation in other parts of Istanbul is no less alarming. The average monthly rent is 26,326 TL in Küçükçekmece, 36,364 TL in Avcılar, 23,003 TL in Beylikdüzü, and 25,342 TL in Tuzla. Each of these figures exceeds the minimum wage. Once commuting expenses and utility bills are added, it becomes unmistakably clear: it is simply impossible to earn enough to cover even the most basic costs of living. Moreover, many employers disregarding the harsh working conditions, the fact that these jobs fall far below women’s qualifications and that the wages paid are nowhere near enough to cover basic living expenses, accuse young people of being unwilling to work or of rejecting the jobs offered to them. No one works to increase the profits of their bosses or to increase the return on capital. If your job forces you into debt month after month, and if the possibility of securing the kind of job you truly want is virtually nonexistent, as we all know it is, then of course you begin to question the purpose of working at all. For many, their salary does not even cover the costs of simply getting to work: transportation, meals, clothing, and other unavoidable expenses. As a result, many young women who dream of building an independent life, who seek economic autonomy as a pathway out of family pressure or violence, see these aspirations shattered. Some are never able to realize this dream, others are forced to close down the separate homes they have struggled to maintain and return to environments marked by coercion, violence, and control.
Marriage and childbirth remain among the most significant barriers to women’s employment. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) report Policy Recommendations for NEET Young Women in Turkey, published in March 2025, the contrast between women and men becomes stark when NEET rates are examined by marital status. The NEET rate for single men is 15 percent, rising only slightly to 16 percent for married men. For women, however, the picture is dramatically different: while 23 percent of single women are NEET, this rate jumps to 72 percent among married women. As the report underscores, marital status creates almost no meaningful difference in men’s likelihood of being NEET, yet it profoundly shapes women’s.[ii]
Women’s labor-force withdrawal is supported by data. A study by Bahçeşehir University’s Center for Economic and Social Research on “The Istanbul Labor Market and Women’s Employment” clearly illustrates this pattern. According to the findings, women’s employment drops by an average of 11% after marriage, and with the birth of a first child it declines by an additional 7.2%. The same study also shows how marriage and motherhood dramatically expand women’s unpaid labor burden within the household. Women who hold paid jobs nonetheless spend roughly 100 hours per week on domestic and non-domestic tasks. In the most common division of labor, women carry out 75% of household chores while men perform only 25%. The gender gap in time spent on childcare is even more striking: the arrival of a first child increases a woman’s total weekly workload by 30.4 hours, whereas the increase for men is a mere 9.5 hours.[iii]
When we consider the sheer amount of time married women with children must devote each week to domestic labor and childcare, it becomes utterly clear why securing formal employment is even more difficult for women with children. A glance at job listings shows that positions with reasonable hours or without shift work are almost nonexistent. This immediately raises the question: who will care for the children? Setting aside the absence of free, high-quality public childcare, even in cases where a woman is prepared to spend half her salary on daycare and the other half on rent, the reality is that daycare schedules simply do not align with working hours. Even assuming a center operates on weekdays, in the many sectors where women are required to work six days a week, which daycare will accept a child on that sixth day? The result is that women are often pushed to leave their children with older siblings or to remain outside the labor force until their child is old enough to stay home unsupervised. Another “solution” is relying on an older woman in the extended family,if she agrees, to take on childcare, which ultimately means that for one woman to participate in paid employment, another woman must withdraw from it.
In a system where living conditions already make it nearly impossible to live debt-free under the pressures of capital and the state, men compound women’s burdens by indebting them. They take out loans in women’s names but fail to repay them, and they withhold wages, denying women the ability to spend their earnings as they see fit. Just as domestic labor and childcare confine women to the home, this system enforces economic dependence on men. Women, whose unpaid labor keeps the world turning, become even more invisible when they seek a divorce, as the labor they have provided for years is already unrecognized. While the work women perform within marriage empowers men and simultaneously disempowers women, their alimony rights are increasingly restricted, the Religious Affairs Directorate has reopened debates on women’s inheritance rights, and the structural barriers preventing mothers and older women from entering the workforce are treated as if they do not exist. Yet no one asks the most fundamental question: why do two out of every three women remain outside the labor force?
The burden of care work imposed on women extends beyond childcare to include the care of elderly family members. This is underscored by demographic data pointing to a rising median age and a growing elderly population. According to TURKSTAT’s 2025 population data, the median age in Turkey has reached 34.4, and one in four households includes at least one person aged 65 or older. These figures make it clear that elder care will become an increasingly urgent social need. Yet, it remains impossible to predict the full scope of the additional burden that will fall on women. We must begin discussing the consequences of an aging population and its impact on women’s lives. However, the expectation that women should continue having children under the guise of family policies, ostensibly to address an aging population, speaks volumes about the future being planned for us. The state is essentially saying: have children so that they can care for you in old age, implying that no support will be provided now, just as none exists in other areas. Childcare and nursery services still remain unresolved, currently, both eldercare and childcare are responsibilities placed squarely on women. And yet, the state plans to continue leaving this growing burden of unpaid care work to women, without compensation. While officials claim they want to increase women’s employment, no realistic policies or practices are being implemented to relieve women of the unpaid labor that already sustains society.
What is being imposed on us today as “debt” is, in reality, the appropriation of women’s labor has been rendered invisible for years. We are the ones who keep the world running at home, at work, in caregiving, and on the streets; we are not the ones in debt. This debt is owed by men, by the state, and by capital itself, all of which sustain their existence through the exploitation of women’s invisible labor. The poverty forced upon us is the accumulated result of their unpaid bills over the years. If it is women’s labor that keeps the world turning, then we are the true creditors of that world. And we will not relinquish our claims: our right to equality, to freedom, and to a life free from debt.
For the original in Turkish / Yazının Türkçesi için:
Translator: İpek Tabur
[i] https://altinbas.edu.tr/nd.pweb?NID=490
[ii] https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2025-05/undp-tr-gkgk-report-05302025.pdf
[iii] https://betam.bahcesehir.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Istanbul-isgucu-piyasasi-ve-kadin-istihdami-2025.pdf
