The Political Economy of Uneven Growth: Regime Change and Gendered Inequalities

This paper investigates the nonlinear relationship between gender inequality, female socioeconomic development, and economic performance in Türkiye over the period 1990–2024 using a Markov-switching dynamic specification combined with Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) models. While the linear ARDL benchmark indicates a stable long-run negative association between gender inequality and per capita income, the Markov-switching model reveals significant state dependence: the impact of gender inequality strengthens in specific regimes, and female labour force participation displays sign-switching behaviour across states. Furthermore, NARDL estimates confirm asymmetric long-run dynamics, showing that capital formation and female educational attainment foster economic growth, whereas female human development exhibits direction-dependent adjustments with gender inequality. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the gender–development–growth nexus in Türkiye is driven by both state-dependent and direction-dependent dynamics, underscoring the need for integrated policy frameworks that promote female capital accumulation, labour market inclusion, and sustained gender equality.