Why are there so many female academics in Turkey?

Feminist philosophers drew attention to this THE  article on gender equality in academia. The article highlights striking differences between countries on gender participation in academia, with a 47% female participation rate in Turkey, and an abysmal 12.7% in Japan as two extremes (see the map through the link). For most of my academic career, I have studied and worked in Belgium, where gender participation is very poor (it's one of the red countries on the map). Only 13% of full professors in Belgium are women. In the EU, only Cyprus and Luxembourg do worse. In this post, I want to examine  causes for the disparity (the high % in Turkey; the low % in Belgium), drawing amongst others on personal experience, and on this highly relevant article on Turkish academia.

First, some preliminary puzzling observations. Turkey has overall a low participation of women in the labor market (e.g., only 28% compared to Belgium's 48% - that is not very high, but significantly higher than Turkey). Turkey scores lower than Belgium on the gender inequality index (i.e., more gender inequality): Belgium is ranked 12, Turkey 68.  Turkey also has a lower proportion of females graduating from college (42.9%) than the EU countries, including Belgium.

So why does Turkey have better academic representation of women, even compared to countries with a high egalitarianism, such as Norway or Sweden? Healey et al. rely on  historical data, qualitative interviews and comparative data analysis, finding that there are various historical and contextual factors at work.

1. There is a long history of state ideology that promoted increased participation in the Turkish academic labor force. In the 1920s, the new Turkish republic sought to secularize and reform higher education, leading to an entry of female lecturers in Turkish higher education as early as 1920-1930. Although there were few explicit gender equality policies in place, the Kemalist principles promoted gender equality against a strong tradition of sex segregation originating from the Ottoman times. Compare this to Belgium. In Leuven, girls were only allowed to be students in 1920, and of course there were no female lecturers at that time. It was only in the 1960s that higher education became generally accepted as a choice for young women. I do not have data for when female lecturers (all levels) appeared in Belgium, but anecdotally this seems not earlier than the 1970s. So the historical perception of women as capable academics is far more culturally entrenched in Turkey than in Belgium , and there is a much longer history of women in academia. 
2. In Turkey, academia was and still is regarded as a female-appropriate career choice. As Healey et al. explain "academic career were historically and socially constructed and sex-typed as ‘safe’ and ‘proper’ choices for graduate women in Turkey. Women were socially encouraged to take up professional employment, as opposed to entrepreneurial or commercial careers, since these were considered harmonious with the potent image of ‘a respectful Turkish woman’" (p. 253). Interestingly, Turkey has a lower disparity between men and women who graduate in science subjects than most EU countries. So gender stereotypes (that women would be less capable of doing research than men, or less qualified for some forms of research, like physics, philosophy or mathematics) do not play a large role in Turkey as they do in Belgium. In Belgium today, unfortunately, there is still a widespread perception that women are not as capable academics as men. This is hard to quantify, but I have talked to many male academics who keep on insisting on innate gender differences, backing their claims up with dubious evolutionary psychological research that seems to indicate that women are less ambitious or have different minds that make them less suitable for academic research, etc. Many senior male academics I know accept the innate gender difference story, and thus even feel that policies to increase women's participation in Belgian academia would be at the expense of quality. In fact, whenever there is a debate on affirmative action, I often hear the worry that any form of affirmative action will lead to a decrease in quality and excellence. 
3. A significant expansion of the universities in Turkey starting the 1990s (with the number of state universities going from 29 to 76 between 1990 and 2004) created increased demand for academics and opportunities for career mobility for both men and women in Turkish academia. There was an increase of 75% full professors, many of those positions were filled by women. In Belgium, the gender gap in academia is decreasing, but unfortunately, economic recession in the EU has markedly decreased the number of new hires. Retiring (mostly male) professors are usually replaced not by new faculty, but by temporary lecturers. So even if more women are hired, it will take a very long time at this rate to close the gender gap. 
4. The promotion system in Turkish tertiary education is more transparent compared to other countries. Vacancies for full professor have to be advertised, and criteria for promotion to full professor are clear and transparent, with a well-defined list of criteria. These do not make any explicit reference to gender equality, but it nevertheless results in greater equality of access to full professorial posts than in many other countries, where such standardization is rare. This transparency compares very favorably to both the Netherlands or Belgium, where many full professors are recruited through closed procedures, i.e., the position is never advertised.  Many people are perpetually stuck at the level of assistant professor, despite an impressive research portfolio. Lack of transparency in hiring and promotion, even when supplemented by gender-equality promoting policies, is to the detriment of women. When Dutch departments try to fill a research chair or other prestigious position they look for people in their immediate network, and those people tend to be men. In Belgium and the Netherlands, even if a faculty position is formally advertised, there is often already a favored candidate who will take up the position, often someone who has been groomed for the position for years before it becomes vacant (e.g., a postdoc at the same institution). Unfortunately, men seem to have more access to this form of privilege than women. Other, more transparent procedures such as the Odysseus scheme also seem to favor men disproportionally. This scheme offers prestigious chairs at Belgian universities to foreigners, or to people who have established their academic career elsewhere, through a competition, with a generous start up grant. But in order to compete, a Belgian university has to sponsor one's application (i.e., in practice, a department has to nominate a candidate). The importance of informal networks here again favors men disproportionately, as can be seen in the recent list of awarded grants (of 59 grants awarded, only 6 appear to be to women,  only 10%)
5. The qualitative interviews of Healey et al. revealed that women academics often relied on employed domestic help. Many academic women were married to academic partners, and relying on domestic help allowed them to cope with the traditional gender patterns that are still prevalent in Turkey. Nevertheless, Turkish people hold traditional views on gender division of labor. By contrast (and this is hard to quantify), Belgian women are still expected to work half time or take a step back once they've had a baby. Relying on domestic help, like Turkish women, is not regarded in a favorable light. As a female academic once told me, "I've dismissed my cleaning lady, because I felt that I should be doing my own housework. It's more difficult to combine with an academic career, but I feel that this is something I ought to do myself". Similarly, another female academic with several children, who was forced to quit her academic aspirations for an administrative position said "I felt I could not be a good mother to them when they needed me most. I kept on feeling my research was getting in the way of my being there for them". Undeniably, this dilemma plays for many women, but may be more starky felt by Belgian female academics than by Turkish ones, because relying on external help for the household is regarded as less appropriate for Belgian women.  

In sum, the Turkish situation indicates that explicit policies promoting gender equality alone, although laudable, are not sufficient (Turkish academia even now has few such policies in place, whereas Belgium has many). It seems rather that transparency in hiring and promotion, a tradition of women in academia, a perception of women as capable academics are very important factors.