MÜSİAD Women International Awareness Summit ’24 (IAS ’24)
19 October 2024
Distinguished Madam,
Honourable Minister,
Distinguished guests,
Most esteemed representatives of our business world,
Dear young people,
And esteemed members of the press,
I greet you with respect and reverence,
Welcome, all of you, to the MÜSİAD Women International Awareness Summit 2024; you have honoured us…
MÜSİAD is a pioneering civil society organization founded in 1990 by 12 young entrepreneurs with the horizon of “High Morality, High Technology” and the aim of becoming the domestic and national force of the Turkish business world.
MÜSİAD is like a family hearth. Here we mature, we develop, we grow stronger, and we carry the success of honest toil to the whole world.
For a full 34 years MÜSİAD has carried out all its work with this consciousness, and God willing it will continue to carry it out in this same vein in the periods ahead.
Today, the MÜSİAD Women International Awareness Summit, which is the occasion of our being together, is a highly important summit that gives a visionary perspective to the women playing a role in our business world, offers new and different ideas, and strives to open up more space for women in the business world of the future.
On this occasion, I once again offer my heartfelt thanks to all our participants who have favoured our summit, to our esteemed speakers and to our most distinguished guests for their attendance and their contributions.
Our distinguished guests,
MÜSİAD Women, which began its work in 2018, continues its journey with the aim of strengthening women’s entrepreneurship in our country and of emphasizing the place of women in social life.
Since the very first day it took office, MÜSİAD Women has been a structure that has striven to create awareness in every field in which women are present and with which they come into contact. With the many activities it has carried out in this vein, it has also succeeded in reaching a large audience within a short time.
The “IAS International Awareness Summit”, one of the important undertakings carried out by MÜSİAD Women and first held in 2022, aims to identify social problems, to create awareness of the problems experienced and, together with the solutions presented, to build a foundation for the policies to be implemented in subsequent periods.
While our summit addresses these approaches from an international perspective, it also aims to take solid steps to remedy existing shortcomings.
The motto of the “IAS – International Awareness Summit”, whose second edition we are holding today with pride and joy, is “It Makes No Difference to Us!”...
Together with the motto “It Makes No Difference to Us!”, we shall discuss the improvement of the negative situations women encounter in their commercial and working lives, sustainability in family companies and, most importantly, how the balance between family life and working life should be achieved.
I pray to Almighty God that our summit, held with the intense participation of many company owners, company executives and entrepreneurs as well as young people, may bring blessings to our country and our nation.
Distinguished guests, esteemed representatives of the business world,
We know that women’s employment and entrepreneurship have increased significantly in our country in recent years. If we touch upon these in broad outline, the following picture emerges…
While total female employment in our country stood at only 4.3 million in 2005, as of the second quarter of 2024 it has risen to 10.9 million.
Again, while the number of women included in the labour force was 4.8 million in 2005, as of the second quarter of 2024 our total female labour force has risen to approximately 12.2 million.
Thus, over the past 20 years the employment rate among women has risen from %17.7 to %32.6, the highest level in history.
The unemployment rate among women, which fell to %10.8 in the second quarter of 2024, has declined to the lowest level of the last 40 quarters, corresponding to 10 years.
Within the scope of the 12th Development Plan, it is targeted to raise the female labour force participation rate to %40.1 and the female employment rate to %36.2 by the end of 2028.
A change in two directions is targeted within the scope of the plan. Efforts are targeted to increase women’s entrepreneurship and technological literacy in rural areas, to create social spaces for women, to provide care services in a high-quality, affordable and accessible manner, and to make women working as agricultural labourers salaried and registered.
On the other hand, programs in fields such as entrepreneurship, financial and digital literacy and cooperatives, which will increase women’s participation in the labour force, will be expanded in scope and made widespread.
There has also been a significant increase in the proportion of women entrepreneurs from 2002 to the present day. While the proportion of women entrepreneurs was %13.1 in 2002, in 2023 the ratio rose to %17.4.
It is fitting to emphasize that an even better rise has occurred in the number of higher education graduates: while the proportion of women aged 25 and over who were higher education graduates was %7.1 in 2008, this ratio rose to %21.6 in 2022.
When the labour force participation rate is examined according to educational status, it is seen that the higher women’s level of education, the more they participate in the labour force. While the labour force participation rate of women who are not literate is %13.9, that of women who are high school graduates is %36.1 and that of women who are vocational or technical high school graduates is %43, the labour force participation rate of women who are higher education graduates has been at the level of %68.8.
As can be seen from this picture, a meaningful change has taken place in women’s employment and entrepreneurship, particularly over the past 20 years. God willing, our greatest wish is that this positive change should continue and increase in the times ahead.
I believe that important organizations such as the “International Awareness Summit” will make a very great contribution to this rising graph…
Our distinguished guests,
We extend our warm thanks to our MÜSİAD Women President Meryem İlbahar, who has taken on the task of holding and successfully sustaining the “International Awareness Summit” whose second edition we are proudly holding, to the members of the MÜSİAD Women Board of Directors who guided the process with their devoted efforts, to the members of our IAS’24 Executive Board who assumed great responsibilities in order to bring about our organization, and to the members of our advisory board who provided great benefit to our event with their experience.
God willing, this event too will find a very important place for itself in society, like our MÜSİAD’s long-established organizations that have continued for very many years. I believe this. I wholeheartedly believe that this important event of ours will be one that emphasizes the place of women in the business world, that broadens this field and that is followed with interest.
Thanking you very much for your participation, I greet you all with respect and reverence.
May God protect you.
Mahmut Asmalı
President of MÜSİAD