Introduction: Depression which is one of the mood disorders, causes
a decrease in the work that requires participation during the day, and
affects interpersonal relationships. It is known to be a fairly common
mental disorder, especially among women. The aim of this systematic
review is to investigate the effect of women’s employment status on the
severity of depressive symptoms in Turkey.
Method: We searched the databases of YÖK Thesis Center, ULAKBIM,
Web of Science and Scopus to detect those studies aiming to compare
the employed women with housewives in terms of the depressive
symptoms measured with validated self-report scales in Turkish.
Results: Of the 283 studies reported in Turkish or English as an article or
dissertation, 10 met the inclusion criteria for meta-analysis. The random
effects meta-analysis conducted with R 4.0.1, meta and metafor package
revealed a slight and statistically nonsignificant effect of the employment
status on women’s depressive scores (g=-0.13 95% Confidence Interval
[CI] [-0.41, 0.14]). Heterogeneity between studies was estimated at
a high level (I2=90.3% 95% CI [84.3%, 94%]). Results of the metaregression
analyses implied that neither the sample size (R2=0.00%)
nor the publication year (R2=5.58%) were among the main sources the
heterogeneity. The findings suggest that the risk of having depressive
symptoms is nearly same in employed women as in housewives.
Discussion: Hence, employment status is unlikely to be among the main
factors leading to relatively higher prevalence of depression among
women.
Keywords: Depression, employed women, Turkey, unemployed women