Women’s roles in Turkish family businesses: Patterns and transformations from the 1960s to the 1990s

This article explores the evolving role of women in Turkish family businesses from the 1960s to the early 2000s, combining novel quantitative data with qualitative case studies. While the core emphasis is on the period between the 1960s and 1990s, our analysis also includes qualitative insights that extend into the early 2000s. Using a new dataset derived from Turkish firm registries (1957–1994), we trace women’s formal presence in multi-owner corporations and examine how gendered business roles were shaped by institutional and family structures over time. We find that while women were increasingly included as shareholders or founders—especially during the 1980s—this often reflected legal or symbolic inclusion rather than meaningful executive power. Drawing from four in-depth case studies, we show how generational shifts, export-oriented growth, and educational opportunities enabled greater participation by younger women, though often without full authority. These cases also underscore how older legal and social norms, including inheritance practices and marital labour strategies, continued to shape women’s positions in family firms well into the late twentieth century. The insights reveal how modernisation, including urbanisation and rising educational attainment, created both constraints and new opportunities for younger generations of women. By linking institutional and socio-historical factors, the article contributes to the international literature on gender, entrepreneurship, and family business in underexplored contexts.