BPW launches international ‘Equal Pay Day’ campaign in İstanbul

The BPW’s “Equal Pay for Equal Work” campaign, an ongoing initiative in 50 countries that began in 1988, aims to close the gender gap in income between men and women doing the same jobs.

“The Business and Professional Women’s Foundation represents and focuses on two goals -- increasing the influence of women in the economy and in decision-making roles,” BPW International President Freda Miriklis said.

Miriklis, who said she was impressed by the progress in women’s rights she had witnessed in her last three visits to İstanbul, stated that she was excited to bring this international campaign to Turkey.

But Sarıgül and the President of BPW in Turkey Arzu Özyol said the battle for gender equality has not yet been won in Turkey. Özyöl stated that March 8, International Women’s Day, always makes her angry. Every year women groups, politicians and the country in general unite around the advancement of women’s rights. “But then March 9 comes, and the work finishes. This is not a one-day fight,” she pressed.

Turkey, the world’s 17th largest economy and a growing regional power, ranks 122 out of 135 countries surveyed last year by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for its Gender Gap Index. Sarıgül, expressing his wholehearted support for the campaign and struggle for women’s rights, agreed much work remains to be done. Focusing on the underrepresentation of women in Parliament, he asked, “Why do women only make up 14 percent of Turkey’s Parliament?” Sarıgül’s support represents a “new style of leadership,” Miriklis added, “a leadership where men and women lead side by side.”

The gender pay gap is a global malady, Miriklis explained. “There is not a single country in the world where gender pay gap does not exist. In the EU, women are currently earning 17.5 percent less than men. The situation is the same in Australia and is even worse in the United States, where women make 23 percent less than their male counterparts,” Miriklis said. The campaign’s effectiveness in narrowing the gender pay gap is clear. BPW’s members in Germany have been awarded 1 million euros to work on the Equal Pay Day campaign for the next three years. Germany, since the start of the BPW campaign in 2009, has whittled its gender pay gap down to 4 percent, said Miriklis.Miriklis also called for a discussion of successful women in the media.

 “If we only talk about the victimization of women [in gender-based violence] and not their success in various sectors in society, then we miss half of the reality,” she told Today’s Zaman. “And we say, in a way, there is no hope. And that is not true. We need a discussion of successful women in the media.”