Final Event: Closing the Gender Gaps in Labour Markets and Skills of the Future

5 February 2025
Feriye, Ortaköy

Final event of The Closing the Gender Gaps in Labour Markets and Skills of the Future Project, supported by the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul, was held with the participation of representatives from municipalities, civil society, academia and the private sector institutions.

The meeting, which aims at helping to eliminate inequalities in this field by strengthening the cooperation of different stakeholders by looking at the working life of the future through the lens of gender equality, consisted of 2 panel sessions and networking breaks. The event started with the opening speech of TESEV Executive Director Özge Aktaş Mazman. Following the briefing on the project by TESEV Project Coordinator Çağla Ayaz, the panel sessions which were moderated by TESEV Research Director Itır Akdoğan. In the first panel titled “Gender Equality in Labour Market”, Prof. Dr. Gülay Toksöz (Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Gender Equality Monitoring Association (CEİD)), Dr. Aslı Aydın ( Professor at Kadir Has University) and Dr. Esra Durceylan Kaygusuz (Assistant Professor, Kadir Has University) developed ideas on how the labor markets of the future can be more gender equitable, through the general patterns of women’s employment in Turkey in comparison with EU countries, the future of work within the framework of the twin transformation debates and the projections of international reports on skills and labour markets of the future.

Following the networking break, in the panel titled “Skills and Competencies of the Future”, Prof. Dr. Emre Erdoğan ( Professor at Bilgi University), Özgenur Korlu (Policy Analyst, Education Reform Initiative (ERG)), Bora Caldu (Chief Executive Officer of Habitat Association) and Çağla Ayaz (Project Manager at TESEV) discussed how formal education and informal practices such as gender equality projects of the private sector and civil society efforts can be planned more accurately and efficiently to solve societal problems in order to provide skills that may come to the fore in the future by examining the current situation, approach and expectations of young people and children in the face of the future professional life with a gender equality perspective.

Participants had the opportunity to continue the discussions started earlier and explore possible collaborations at the lunch organized after the panel sessions.