From worker to engineer; From employee to manager; The contribution of our women as human resources; It will be decisive in achieving our goals in the path of growth and development. We will continue our work with this awareness.
Minister of Trade Ruhsar PEKCAN
I congratulate all our women on International Women’s Day.
The United Nations announced the main theme of this year’s International Women’s Day as “Women’s Leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world”. Today; the situation regarding the status of women; from developing countries to the most developed countries; for the world in general; to be considered; It continues to be an area that needs to be studied and steps to be taken to improve it. 8 March to us; It provides an opportunity to evaluate where we are regarding the status of women and to increase social awareness in this area.
Of course, studies on this subject are not limited to one day or one week; There should be ongoing studies. Women; To be able to take part more effectively and equitably in all areas of life, especially social, economic and cultural areas; It is essential for them to continue their lives and realize their ideals without being exposed to any kind of discrimination, exclusion or even ill-treatment. According to International Labor Organization data, there continues to be a large gap in the labor force participation rate of women in the world.
The United Nations is; It states that if women participate in employment at the same rate as men, per capita income in the 15 largest developing economies has the potential to increase by 20 percent by 2030. Such indicators indicate that women can be more active, especially in the economic field; It reveals that if this is the case, social welfare can reach much higher levels. Especially; In today’s global economy; the advancement of digitalization; As access to information and resources becomes easier, new opportunities emerge that can support women’s empowerment. The important thing is to support these opportunities brought by technology with legal and institutional infrastructures and to develop the right ecosystems and social awareness regarding the improvement of women’s status.
In these areas; to our state and non-governmental organizations; All institutions and individuals who contribute to the formation of the university and public opinion have duties and responsibilities. Regarding the improvement of the status of women, which is a global area of struggle; We must continue to work together in coordination to bring our country’s position to the highest possible level. As the Ministry of Commerce; I would especially like to point out that we continue our work by signing concrete projects in close cooperation with our private sector and non-governmental organizations. As a matter of fact, our work for women entrepreneurs directly coincides with our Ministry’s goal of spreading exports to the public.
A broad perspective from women’s cooperatives to e-commerce
In order to take Turkey’s current level of exports to the next level, we should not only increase the share of technology in our exports, but also focus our exports more locally; to regions; We need to spread it to relatively small companies and entrepreneurs. The roles that our female entrepreneurs will assume and the new business models that will develop under the initiative of our women are also of great importance.
In this context; looks from a broad perspective, from women’s cooperatives to e-commerce; We diversify our projects accordingly. In the light of the new needs and approaches brought about by the 21st century; By carefully reading the changes brought about by global events such as the pandemic; We strive to continue our work to develop ecosystems that are more conducive to the rights and interests of our women.
For example; As we have stated before on different platforms, we aimed to reach women entrepreneurs on a provincial basis and create a network of women entrepreneurs within the framework of our Women Entrepreneur Network Project. To date, we have had the satisfaction of bringing together approximately 1400 women entrepreneurs in these networks in 47 provinces.
Also; Within the framework of our Export Academy Program, which we launched at the end of 2019 and moved to the ‘online’ environment with the pandemic; We provide training and mentoring support to women and young entrepreneurs who are willing and have potential to export in our country, in the areas they need.
46 percent of those who benefit from the E-Commerce Academy are women
Besides these; We have implemented based on the increasing importance of e-commerce today; e-commerce.gov. Electronic Commerce Information Platform and E-Commerce Academy, which can be accessed at tr, continue to make significant contributions to our citizens and women entrepreneurs.
At the E-Commerce Academy, for our businesses that want to carry out e-commerce by moving their business to the digital environment; Information is included on many subjects, from setting up an e-commerce site to e-export. More than 42 thousand users have benefited from these trainings at the e-commerce academy so far, and it is very pleasing for us that nearly half of this number, 46 percent, are women. In addition, a total of 822 thousand dollars of loans were given to women and young entrepreneurs through Eximbank in 2020. Additionally, a 25 basis point interest discount is applied to our women and young entrepreneurs on pre-shipment export credit foreign currency loans.
On the other hand, today; At the point of achieving economies of scale and achieving effective results from production to export; Cooperatives continue to offer important opportunities. Cooperativeism; For our country in general; It has a potential that we can never ignore, especially for the participation of our women in economic life.
As the Ministry, we encourage women to take an active role in cooperatives; We even attach great importance to them coming together and forming women’s cooperatives based on women’s labor. In this context, we have focused our Support of Cooperatives KOOP-DES Program on women’s cooperatives.
We provide financial support to cooperatives whose members are mostly women and aim to utilize women’s labor. Within the scope of the program, 149 projects of 139 women’s cooperatives in 2020; We provided grant support of over 14 million 500 thousand TL.
Again, we visited 12 provinces within the scope of the Cooperative Promotion and Development Project. We carry out our focus on women, through our Women and Youth Entrepreneurship Export Department, which we have established within our Ministry, with the aim of making our women exporters and entrepreneurship.
We must continue our efforts for better conditions.
Essentially, today’s global economy offers tremendous opportunities for women’s empowerment. It is up to us to make the best use of these opportunities. I wholeheartedly believe that thanks to our women entrepreneurs, our country’s trade volume will increase further, our economy will grow steadily and we will quickly reach our goals.
In value-added exports, which we always emphasize and care about; in domestic production and domestic technology; It is obvious that our women can make great contributions to innovation and design. From worker to engineer; From employee to manager; The contribution of our women as human resources; It will be decisive in achieving our goals in the path of growth and development. We will continue our work with this awareness. Apart from economic life; We must continue our efforts to provide better conditions for our women in all areas of life, especially in social and cultural areas. In this regard, DÜNYA Newspaper, one of the leading media organs of our country; I find it quite appropriate and meaningful that it focuses on the role and status of our women. My congratulations to the managers and employees of DÜNYA Newspaper; I would like to express my wishes for their continued success.
With these feelings and thoughts, I hope that March 8 International Women’s Day will be beneficial for our country and all humanity…
