The contributing authors in this book emphasize that in Turkey the female labor force participation rate is distinctly lower than in advanced economies despite a significant improvement in the last decade. The indicated data evoke several simple questions. Firstly, what's holding women back? What are the impediments to female labor force participation that cause the gender gap in employment? Secondly, what are the costs of lower economic participation of women for themselves, their families and the economy as a whole? We hope that identifying and assessing factors that enhance or mute labor force participation of women can open important policy insights.

This book investigates the determinants of bank capital structure and procyclical behavior of leverage. A panel data analysis is developed to find out the relation between different types of leverage ratios and asset growth of banks. Furthermore, possible impacts of bank specific and macroeconomic variables on the bank capital structure are discussed. The book concludes that the leverage of Turkish banks is procyclical, which is the outcome of a positive relation between asset growth and leverage. The procyclical leverage could contribute to higher instability in the financial sector and the overall economy. Therefore, further regulations are assumed to be necessary. Size, profit, number of banks, inflation, exchange rate, and gross domestic product are the factors that affect Turkish banks' capital structure.