Another critical report of Turkey was published on Wednesday. This time it was the United Nations’ annual Human Development Report. The report said Turkey is performing poorly in terms of education quality and the rate of women’s employment.

Turkey was rated at the 97th place out of 187 countries listed on the human development index, which also addressed urgent global challenges such as sustainability and equity.

The report includes the scores for the human development index, which measures long-term progress in three categories – life expectancy, access to knowledge and standard of living.

Turkey increased its education rate by 4.9 percent between 1998 and 2011, but it is still below the average of countries in Europe and Central Asia.

The human development index also highlighted Turkey’s low level of female employment and comparatively poor maternal mortality rate, which is higher than European countries and neighbors like Azerbaijan.

Some 27 per cent of adult women have a secondary or higher level of education compared to 46.7 per cent of their male counterparts, the report said. Some 24 percent of Turkish women work, the report said, noting that this figure was 59.5 percent in Azerbaijan. Emphasizing that the female labor rate was very low in Turkey, Akat said that even when women receive an education, they are prevented from participating in the labor force.

According to the report, 23 of 100,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes.