Low Income more Challenging for Women: Social and Economic Problems of Women in Minimum Wage Families

The minimum wage is defined as the lowest payment sufficient to meet an employee’s essential needs. Nearly half of the employees in Turkey are paid at the minimum-wage level. Although there is a second working person in many of these families, some rely on a single-income earner who is a minimum-wage worker. In such cases, the only stable income in the household is the minimum wage earned by one family member, which is insufficient to cover the expenses of all family members. In this study, a questionnaire was conducted with 100 women from different families whose sole income was the minimum wage, and 30 of these participants were interviewed. The study revealed that women in minimum-wage families experience the disadvantages of low income and poverty more acutely than men. In particular, women bear the harshest consequences of poverty, as they are often burdened with all domestic responsibilities, including childcare, care for elderly or disabled family members, household chores, and cooking. As a natural consequence of this situation, the social lives of women in low-income families are severely restricted. In almost every case, they lag behind the social lives of men.