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Western places that are more acceptable from a religious point of view, enjoy a wider popularity among
young Emirati women, such as art galleries, flea markets, non-chain coffee shops, second-hand bookstores,
or sports facilities. The young women often perceive such places as easy-going, permissive environments
where they can relax from the strict gendered norms of their own Emirati environments.
As clearly recognizable “outsiders”, however, they do not always feel entirely comfortable there.
Emirati friends told me that they were often openly stared at or photographed without permission, usually
by tourists who were thrilled to finally see an Emirati woman. Some Emiratis also felt that many expatriates
resented their presence in Western places, as if they were, as Amira put it, “a problem to come”. While
some Emiratis understand this unwelcoming attitude as postcolonial arrogance, others assume that
foreigners are simply afraid of unintentionally upsetting one of the supposedly all-powerful nationals and
having to face harsh consequences. Irrespective of the reasons, the occasionally annoyed reactions of
expatriates in “white” places make Emirati women sometimes feel “out of place” and not particularly
welcome.
3.3. “Emirati” places
In contrast to Dubai’s numerous non-Emirati territories, young Emirati women’s geographies of the city
contain only few places labeled as “Emirati”. Those include the luxurious Dubai Mall, especially on
weekends, a handful of smaller, elegant malls along the coast or near Emirati residential areas further inland,
and the newly opened entertainment and shopping districts Citywalk and Box Park. All “Emirati” places
share a number of characteristics: They are perceived as orderly, clean, safe and morally impeccable; they
are associated with an exclusive global culture of consumption, and they are privately owned, with security
staff, surveillance cameras and “courtesy policies” that discipline visitors’ behavior and dress. Similar to
the coffee shops explored by Lara Deeb and Mona Harb (2013) in Beirut, they thus “blur the borderline
between public and private spheres by domesticating public space” (2013: 27).
Most young Emirati women spend much of their leisure time in these places, mainly in the malls. There
they socialize with female friends, go to the movies, visit coffee shops and restaurants, stroll, or go
shopping. For them, malls are convenient and respectable places that considerably expand their access to
public urban space (cf. Abaza 2001, Akçaoǧlu 2009, Le Renard 2015). As Najma explained, women’s
families assume that malls provide a protective environment for their daughters, sisters, or wives:
“Our parents think that malls are safe. […] With the malls, it’s the idea that they know where you are, and that you are locatable.
And that they know everyone, especially from the Emirati society which is very small, and they all know each other. Which means
that someone is going to be there who knows you, in a way. So, it’s so much safer.”
As Najma’s quote highlights, malls and other Emirati places are, on the one hand, places where the
young women can feel “at home”, but on the other hand, they are also the public arenas where young
women’s conduct and appearance are most closely monitored and judged by their own compatriots.
Through displays of socially desirable feminine behavior and decent but elegant dress, accessories, perfume
and make-up, young women have to uphold the good reputation and status of their families. Under the
scrutinizing gazes of other Emiratis who “love to judge and gossip,” young women need to demonstrate
time and again that they are “respectable young ladies” who obey the rules of their society, as Firiyal, one
of my friends, put it. In Emirati places, the boundaries between men and women are more strictly policed
than in other environments, and even the most adventurous of my interviewees told me they would not dare
to enter a place that was full of Emirati men, fearing harassment and gossip. Thus, “Emirati” places](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-19-320.jpg)
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constitute rather ambivalent environments for young national women: The places where they are among
their own compatriots also harbor the greatest risks for their reputations.
But even this intense social control cannot prevent young Emiratis from transgressing moral boundaries.
Many young women find the gender-mixed character of malls and other “Emirati” places tantalizing, since
only this kind of leisure environment offers the chance to playfully interact and flirt with Emirati men.
Fatma explained:
“We cannot have such interactions with men anywhere else. We have family gatherings, we have male cousins, but we cannot
just chitchat with them. It’s not good, it’s not decent. […] The eyes of the family are always on us, on the girls. You shouldn’t do
anything, you should be good, an angel, and you shouldn’t be naughty, you know. It’s nice to have a different kind of interaction
sometimes.”
Since this “different kind of interaction” between unrelated men and women is socially frowned upon,
however, it cannot take place in settings such as coffee shops or restaurants where accidental observers
could easily take notice. Instead, such clandestine interactions occur in the transit and passage zones of
“Emirati” territories, in interstices and on back-stages, where people keep on moving and encounters are
fleeting. While circulating through the malls’ passages, on their way through the malls’ car parks, or while
driving at night along well-known “flirt roads” such as Jumeirah Beach Road, Emirati men and women
exchange glances and smiles. They engage in playful banter and mutual teasing; young men approach
women with small gifts such as CDs with love songs, roses, or chocolates and attempt to persuade them to
accept their telephone numbers. Men and women pursue each other in their cars and interact from vehicle
to vehicle through half-open windows.
In such encounters, young Emiratis defy social norms and subvert the hierarchies of gender and
generation (cf. Wynn 1997). However, even during such fleeting encounters women need to protect their
reputation by remaining anonymous, e.g. by exchanging mobile numbers that are not registered in their
names, or by remaining half-hidden behind tinted car windows. “Nothing can bring shame on men,” a
popular proverb states. Young Emirati women’s reputations, however, are much more vulnerable, particular
in those public places where the women ostensibly belong.
4. Conclusion
Amira, the young woman quoted at the beginning, had emphasized her sense of being under constant
scrutiny in the public spaces of Dubai. As this paper has shown, other Emirati women share her sentiments
of being exposed to different kinds of judgement by various audiences in the city. While the places
categorized as “non-Emirati” appear to offer a respite from the gendered constraints prevalent in Emirati
environments, they are often also perceived as unwelcoming to Emirati nationals. “Emirati” places on the
other hand are viewed as safe, respectable and morally impeccable, but there, women experience the most
intense pressure to adhere to strict gendered norms. Hence, they harbor the greatest risks for a woman’s
reputation and social prospects. Yet, the assumption cherished by many families that “Emirati” places offer
no room for transgressions underestimates young women’s (and men’s) creativity and ingenuity in
subverting mechanisms of social control and appropriating public spaces for their own agendas. It is the
passages and transit zones of Emirati territories and thus mobility itself that enables young Emiratis to resist
scrutiny. But even in such fleeting encounters, young women bear the greater risks since it is their
compatriots’ moral judgement that, in the words of Najma, “can literally define your future.”
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Carla Bethmann for inspiring discussions and her insightful and critical comments on an
earlier version of this paper.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-20-320.jpg)
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Table 1. Information about conducted interviews
Cities Ankara Diyarbakır Aegean Region
(Denizli, Muğla)
East Black Sea Region
(Trabzon, Artvin)
Period of field
research
03.-04.2014;
09.-10.2014
03.-04.2014;
04.2015
03.-04.2015 06.-07.2015
Number of
conducted
interviews
20 9 18 18
2.1. Topic of research: diversity of women’s movements
The universal category of gender is a topic which is open to discussion in poststructural, (queer-) feminist
and postcolonial theory, as well as in the identity politics put forward by new social movements. In the
process of social-constructivist transition in Women’s and Gender Studies, the up-to-now collectivist
aspects of women’s movements were questioned (Lenz 2002: 78).
Aside from exploring coalitions and solidarity in women’s movements in Turkey, this project also puts
special emphasis on the integration of this diversity aspect in its research scope. Thus, it is of importance
to discuss the project’s title. Due to reflection of universal debates on collective subjects of women’s
movements, we decided to apply a feminist-oriented social movement research theory, which
conceptualises women’s movements as plural-differentiated and transnationally oriented (Lenz 2014).
While putting an ‘-s’ at the end of women’s movement and feminism, we, as the members of research
project, do aim to include diverse perspectives. Even if the analysis of our interview material is in an early
stage, our first findings could shed light on the specific area which we are targeting. If interviewees have
different positions on certain topics, this plural ‘-s’ plays an important role and it needs to be emphasised.
İlknur Üstün, coodinator of the Women’s Coalition in Ankara, underlines the necessity of touching upon
the topic with special awareness:
[…] it is important to recognize the diversity, it is a dynamic structure, in all of these
diversities, differences it would not be fair to lump them together […]it is necessary to talk
about a process when you talk about woman, women’s movement or movements in Turkey.
(İlknur Üstün 2014)
Violence against women and the ruling government’s misogyny lead to the development of spaces and
platforms for coalitions and solidarity, as Gaye Cön, member of the woman centre KAMER from Muğla,
points out: “Because each passing day there are more attacks against woman by the government, we often
come together there, that is to say if I think about Turkey in general.” (Gaye Cön 2014)
However, the beauty of the matter lies not merely in that solidarity should always be pursued, or that
coalitions should be formed for everything, but rather in the colourful mosaic of different groups attempting
to work together to effect social change. Bahar Bostan, member of the Women’s Rights Commission of
Trabzon Chamber of Lawyers, aptly describes it in the following passage:
Islamist women, Kurdish women, Turkish women - like socialist feminists, Turkish
Women’s Association - we all unite. Especially in case of the state’s invasion of our spaces.
However, when human rights and ethnic issues are on the table, or political matters, or
political differences, we go our separate ways. Well, when we analyse this as Kurdish](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-44-320.jpg)
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Women’s Movement, Turkish Women’s Movement or Secular Women’s Movement, Islamist
Women’s Movement, we disintegrate. (Bahar Bostan 2015)
Nebahat Akkoç, founder of KAMER and based in Diyarbakır, comments on the intersectional perspective
and discusses the interdependent character of women’s issues in the country:
[…] the main issue in Turkey is still the existence of prejudices and discrimination; I have
the impression it is about a lack of clear decisions on whether we want to be on the side of
the leading power, or whether we want to remain independent […] we still cannot talk,
understand the woman issue as independent, abstracted from the system, as a disconnected
issue from other matters, so it remains disconnected. (Nebahat Akkoç 2015)
Interviewees, depending on what group they identify with, had diverse perspectives on, for instance,
LGBTI rights, sex work or education in their mother tongue. At this point, representation of diversity
remains the focal point of this research project.
2.2. Reflection of research: questions on representation
Postcolonial theorist Spivak (2008) underlines postcolonial criticisms of representation and knowledge
production of Eurocentric research. This research project aims to gain understanding by borrowing from
feminist and postcolonial theories in order to properly deal with the delicate matter of this “crisis of
representation” (Winter 2011: 76). This recognition of the (re-)construction of reality, knowledge
production and epistemic rupture are the leading framework for our approach in the analysis of the
interviews.
Said’s concept of othering and orientalism (1979) is very helpful when reflecting on the role of
researchers from Germany/Europe, and when exploring possible approaches in the fight for women’s
equality in Turkey. However, it cannot tell us much about the epistemic assimilation effects that can also
be observed. Thus, with reference to Spivak’s concept of epistemic rupture, we want to briefly explain what
we refer to when we speak of epistemic assimilation: when discussing the rupture between different
discourses, Spivak stresses that every discourse has its own language, its own narratives and its own rules.
Therefore, the forms of interaction in one discourse can be very different from those in another discourse.
Thus, what counts as adequate or as a good argument is very different in each of those discourses. Following
this approach, the planned report on women’s movements in Turkey has to avoid linear references to the
German/European discourse of gender struggle when interpreting developments in Turkey. Because when
Western epistemic categories are applied in the description of occurrences, it dismisses the discursive
properties of the culture this research is studying. To understand, but not to assimilate the activists in Turkey
to a German perspective, it is necessary to find out in which categories they are speaking of themselves in
order to grasp their self-understanding and their motivation. Taking this into consideration, our aim in the
final report is to move beyond orientalist views on women in Turkey, and paint a detailed and appropriate
picture of what it means to be a woman in Turkey, and what her struggles are.
How does our research team deal with the ‘crisis of representation’, both in theory and in practice?
Theory-wise we refer to the aforementioned postcolonial theory and critics of orientalism. This research
project was designed to be an empirical study, meaning attempts to bridge the gap between empirical
research and theory need to be refined with a special standpoint. The standpoint model of research was
developed by feminist social scientists in the late 80s (Harding 2004). In brief, various social positions](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-45-320.jpg)
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How will we stand side by side? How will we stand as one? How will we recognize each
other’s different experiences and struggle for each other’s’ rights? How will we get
organized around our gendered identities with our ethnic, cultural, class-related, sexual,
regional, religious and bodily differences? (Bilal 2006)
This chain of questions, put forward by the Armenian feminist and academician Melissa Bilal, clarifies
why debates on the politics of solidarity, and on coalitions within the feminist movement happen, despite
their differences. Because of contributions from antiracist, antimilitarist and queer perspectives between
then and now, autonomous feminists aim to approach to Kurdish women and LGBTI groups. Their mutual
opponent, patriarchal structures are identified which oppress women, LGBTI individuals and members of
ethnic and religious minorities through sexism, heterosexism, racism and/or militarism (Acar Savran 2011).
An example of solidarity between feminists and religious-conservative women is the platform ’We stand
by one another’, which was established by female activists, journalists and academics as a reaction to the
headscarf debates in 2008. Women only partly affected by the headscarf ban, came together and insisted
that female students with a headscarf be freely allowed into university buildings, and thus protected from
discrimination based on gender and/or religious affiliation (Koç 2009).
However, because of their experiences within leftist movements in the 70s, many autonomous feminists
have only collaborated sparingly with leftist and Kemalist-oriented women (Somersan 2011: 100 – 123).
Despite all mutual concerns and the diversification process in the frame of historical steps of women’s
movements in the country, how could (im-)possibilities of solidarity and coalitions be put on the table while
there are endless responses and subjective concepts of “being-a-woman”?
4. (Im-)Possibility of coalitions despite of diverse reflections on “being-a-woman“?
There are many different responses to the interview question “Being a women - what does it mean to
you?”:
[…]we talk about a creature which maintains its life, contributes hugely to social
relations, but with its other part being oppressed, exploited, in other words like summation
of being subject and object. (Figen Aras 2015)
[…] she is in part a biological creature, with reproductive organs and breasts, but […]
being a woman means one has to carry lots of things together with place, culture and people
you live with. Both living its delightfulness but more struggle with its difficulties. (İlknur
Üstün 2014)
[…] being a woman is also something we learn about. [...] all cases of being woman, man
and so forth are speculative for me and personally my thing is, you know if the current
situation would not be like this, I would not emphasize my female identity, I would not make
women’s policy. In other words because it does not fit to my attitude, I love to define myself
as a woman as well as a man rather than only as woman or man. But actually you know I
insistently stress my woman identity because we live in a terrible state of society, surely I
believe it is necessary to struggle for this. (Pelin Kalkan 2014)
Since we have endless explanations of what being a woman even means, how can we even talk about
whether all women can fight together? Interviews conducted in 2014 and 2015, and literature analyses](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-47-320.jpg)
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such relations arise from within civil society or between CSOs and the state. The anti-hierarchy discourse is
mainly discussed with regard to relationships within CSOs, and specifically the issue of representation and
leadership.
The critique of hierarchy dovetails for many of my interviewees with their critique of patriarchy. The
women activists from SELİS and KAMER certainly identified male dominance as one of the roots of
hierarchy. As Reşide, one of the youngest activists from SELİS, comments, “We grow up with this
hierarchical structure in which mother is always in the kitchen, is responsible for the child care and the father
works outside. It is all these little things we grow up with” (interview, May 22, 2012). The fact that
dominance in the family translates into dominance of men in mixed group decision-making processes in civil
society annoys these women, and is contrary to their equality-based understanding of civil society. In line
with this approach, the CSOs dominated by men and attributing traditional gender roles to women are called
into question as Reşide from SELİS articulates in the following extract: “…for example, in one of the
meetings I participated in, there were some women who can said that “if a woman does cleaning at home,
gets along well with her husband, she is not exposed to violence”...there are also civil society organisations
[that support this kind of idea]” (interview, May 22, 2012).
Differently, some interviewees from KA-DER and AMARGI emphasize that the transformation of civil
society can only be realised by feminism. While integrating a feminist approach into civil society is
acknowledged as being “difficult due to the dominance of hierarchies within and between the civil society
organisations” (interview with Çiçek, KA-DER, July 21, 2012), Duygu, one of the oldest members of
AMARGİ that I interviewed, argues that feminism has already had a significant impact on civil society. She
says that “it is feminism that will bring horizontal organisation into the society … and should develop
relationships with civil society” (interview, June 2, 2012).
3.2.3. Democratization discourse
The emphasis on the democratic outcomes of the promotion of civil society activism lies at the heart of
democratization discourse, which is circulated by the women from the KAMER, SELİS, US and KA-DER.
Nonetheless, these women activists from two different groups have different ideas about what the main goal
of democratization should be. Whereas almost all of women from KAMER and SELİS evoke a civil society
area free of discriminatory ideas and practices, women from US and KA-DER refer to a civil society space
which becomes more civil through the promotion of active-citizenship.
The interviewees from both Kurdish organisations focus their attention on the need for civil society to
combat discrimination. They frame discrimination between and within CSOs as a “democratic failure”, and
their emphasis upon it is linked to the regional and ethnic problems they encounter as Kurdish women and as
individuals working within Kurdish women’s organisations. In the first place, they argue that they face
discrimination on the basis of ethnic difference coded in geographical terms. Thus Nuray from KAMER
mentions that she is bothered by some people from other organisations referring to her as “coming from the
Eastern part of Turkey” (interview, May 16, 2012), i.e. the Kurdish regions of Eastern and South-Eastern
Anatolia. As noted by Derya from KAMER: “One of the problematic areas in the civil society is
discrimination … We can see it when we go to the West from the East [of Turkey] for project work. When I
say I am from Diyarbakır [a city in Eastern Anatolia], you can see eyebrows are raised, because they have
some type of profile in their minds, and they get surprised if the person they met doesn’t fit into this profile....”
(interview, May 17, 2012). For Derya, this discrimination can even result in violence: she goes on to describe
a Women’s Shelter Congress held in 2012 in which “Our women friends coming from the East and South-
East were almost lynched, they had to be guarded and sent away after they felt their lives were in danger …
This is ridiculous … This is where we are in civil society” (interview, May 17, 2012). Unlike the women](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-58-320.jpg)
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1. Introduction
When I mention to people that I research gender in the Neolithic period, the period when people first
settled down and decided to do agriculture, most of the time I get questions about matriarchy and the Mother
Goddess. The idea of a society ruled by women and the Mother Goddess seems to be still attracting a lot of
attention by the public. The public interest in gender-related issues in the past communities mainly revolves
around the power relations between males and females. But, how do we understand who was ‘wearing the
pants’ in the society if they are long gone? Archaeologists have an answer to this question.
In this paper, I first provide a historical background to gender archaeology and thereafter elaborate on the
use of bioarchaeological studies when considering gender. Bioarchaeology is one of the main sources of a
gendered approach since human body gives archaeologists a great amount of information about how people
lived, what they ate, and what they did regularly. This way it becomes easier to make assumptions about
gendered lifeways in earlier periods.
After that, I discuss figurine analysis and its impacts on gender archaeology. I especially examine the
mother goddess theory that dominated the archaeological interpretation of female figurines until the 1980s.
This theory has been disputed by many scholars (eg. Fleming 1969; Tringham and Conkey 1998), yet there
is still a contingent who supports this idea and proposes that women’s ritual power and importance in the
society stems from their biological roles as birth givers (eg. Roller 1999). Finally, I summarize my
interpretations of the changing gendered lifeways in Central Anatolia from 8500 to 5000 BC as a case study.
2. The History of Gender Archaeology
Anthropological studies that concentrate on women, power and early states started as early as the 1970s
and it became clear that it was necessary to understand women in ancient history in order to understand
women’s roles in history (Hutson et al. 2013: 45). Archaeological research on gender and sexuality developed
thereafter in the 1980s (Conkey and Spector 1984; Voss 2000: 181; Spencer-Wood 2000: 113; Spector 1996:
485).
However, gender theory in archaeology and anthropology, as in other fields of the social sciences, take
their roots from much earlier theories. The origins of the discussion go back to the hypothesis in Engels’
1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Influenced by the post- enlightenment
theories, Morgan, and Bachofen, Engels proposed that there is a steady social development in human
evolution, and matrilineal and matriarchal societies were the original but the earliest social organizations
(Engels 1997[1884]: 12). He (1997[1884]: 14) discusses that in the earliest period of human civilization not
fathers, but mothers were highly esteemed because it was not possible to determine the biological father.
However, with the increase of wealth, men became more important than women in the family. He says “The
overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex.” (Engels 1997[1884]: 14, italics
in the original). With the appearance of monogamy, the first division of labor (childbearing), and the first
class oppression by males onto the females began (Engels 1997[1884]: 16).
In the 1970s, the feminist movement in anthropology and archaeology gained pace. In 1984, Conkey and
Spector wrote ‘Archaeology and the Study of Gender’, underlining that there is androcentrism in
archaeological and ethnological research. They criticized the archaeological approach to female roles as
females are less visible and regarded as separate from males (Conkey and Spector 1984: 6). It was generally
accepted that universal laws of behavior dictated male and female roles and relationships. In many cases,
although archaeologists did not think of women and gender, they were making assumptions or claims about
their roles and positions in prehistoric societies. While making these assumptions, they made use of western](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-92-320.jpg)
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--- “Figurines, Corporeality, and the Origins of the Gendered Body.” A Companion to Gender
Prehistory. Ed. Diane Bolger. Pondicherry, India: Wiley and Blackwell, 2013: 244-264. Print.
Bolger, Diane. “Introduction: Gender Prehistory – The Story So Far.” A Companion to Gender Prehistory.
Ed. Diane Bolger. Pondicherry, India: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013: 1-19. Print.
Borić, Dušan, and T. Douglas Price. “Strontium isotopes document greater human mobility at the start of
the Balkan Neolithic.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.9, 2013: 3298-3303. Print.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977. Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender trouble and the subversion of identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.
Print.
--- Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex". New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Conkey, Margaret W., and Janet D. Spector. “Archaeology and the study of gender.” Advances in
archaeological method and theory 7, 1984: 1-38. Print.
Düring, Bleda S. “Cultural Dynamics of the Central Anatolian Neolithic: the Early Ceramic Neolithic –
Late Ceramic Neolithic Transition.” The Neolithic of Central Anatolia: Internal Developments and
External Relations during the 9th–6th Millennia cal. BC. Proceedings of the International CANew Table
Ronde. Ed. F. Gerard and L. Thissen. Istanbul, Turkey: Ege Yayınları, 2002: 219-236. Print.
Engels, Friedrich. “The origin of the family, private property, and the state”, In: R.C. Tucker (ed.) The
Marx-Engels Reader, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1978[1884]: 734-759. Print.
Fleming, Andrew. “The myth of the mother‐goddess.” World Archaeology 1.2, 1969: 247-261. JSTOR.
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Foucault, Michel. The history of sexuality, Volume I. New York: Vintage, 1978. Print.
Garcia-Ventura, Agnès. “From Engendering to Ungendering: Revisiting the Analyses of Ancient Near
Eastern Scenes of Textile Production.” Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on the Archaeology
of the Ancient Near East Vol. 3. Fieldwork & Recent Research Posters. Eds. Roger Matthews and John
Curtis. Harrasowitz: Wiesbaden, 2012: 505-515. Print.
Gilchrist, Roberta. Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past, London and New York: Routledge,
1999. EBSCOhost. Web. 16 March 2013.
Gimbutas, Marija Alseikaitė. The goddesses and gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 BC, myths and cult
images. Univ of California Press, 1982. Print.
Hamilton, N., J. Marcus, G. Haaland, R. Haaland, and P.J. Ucko. “Viewpoint: Can we interpret figurines?”
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6.2, 1996. 281-307. Cambridge Journals. Web. 11 May 2013.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-98-320.jpg)
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Acknowledgements
This paper forms a part of the PhD thesis of Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören prepared under the supervision of Banu
Ergöçmen and Aysıt Tansel. A major empirical part of the thesis was carried out during a research visit of Ms.
Abbasoğlu-Özgören at Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) funded by the scholarship from
TUBITAK with 2214/A International Doctoral Research Fellowship. She is grateful to TUBITAK for the support,
SUDA for their hospitality and Gunnar Andersson for his technical supervision.
References
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Concepcion, M. B. (1974). Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility. International Labor Review,
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Labor Force Participation and Fertility Decisions of Women in Turkey]. T.C. Atatürk Üniversitesi Journal of
Economics and Administrative Sciences, 20(1), 89-104.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-110-320.jpg)
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1. Introduction
Today in Turkey domestic violence against women has reached such a serious level that even those who
generally ignore the women’s human rights cannot disregard it. Almost daily cases of femicide are the most
concrete evidence of the current situation of domestic violence against women in Turkey. In parallel to the
increasing number of cases of domestic violence against women, efforts to combat and to eliminate it have
also increased, especially in recent years. New policies are established, new laws are implemented, lots of
conferences, workshops, congresses etc. are held, lots of researches are conducted, lots of books and articles
are written and published, at universities new programs on gender and women’s studies are opened and so
on. However remarkable results indicating that domestic violence against women is getting decrease have
not been reached yet. On the contrary unofficial statistics reveal that there is an increase in the number of
femicide cases, ultimate form of violence against women. For example according to We Will Stop Femicide
Platform’s statistics, last year, in 2014, 294 women were killed by their intimates. And in the first 8 month
of 2015, 182 women were killed (http://kadincinayetlerinidurduracagiz.net/veriler/2349/agustos-2015-
kadin-cinayeti-gercekleri). It is also known that most of the women were killed when they attempted to
make their own decisions about their own lives.
So, the present situation can be explained like this: On the one hand there is an increasing struggle to
combat and to eliminate domestic violence against women and on the other hand there is an increasing
number of cases of domestic violence against women. Then, it seems, there is a paradox here. How this
paradox can be explained in a rational manner? What are the gaps between the studies on domestic violence
against women and reality? How these gaps can be filled to find permanent and sustainable solutions for
elimination of domestic violence against women?
At this point, in order to find reasonable answers to these questions it might be useful to review the
results of the previous researches on violence against women from a different point of view. In this context,
some common results obtained from different researches on violence against women are summarized
below:
Men hold the power within the family as a reflection of patriarchal power relations in society. So,
force/violence used by men against family members is legitimate in the event that it is considered necessary
to do so (Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998).
Honor of family legitimizes the violence against women. Accordingly, a woman’s “dishonorable
behaviors” are not accepted and are shamed and blamed even by other women. Therefore, violence against
women for their “dishonorable behaviors” is regarded as legitimate (Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998; Başbakanlık
Aile Araştırma Kurumu [AAK], 1995).
Women victims of domestic violence generally try to keep their family together rather than move
away. In some events, women victims of violence believe that they are responsible for the violence they
suffer. Moreover they accept and internalized violence and learn to live with it (İçli, 1994; AAK 1995;
Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998, Gülçür, 1999).
In accordance with traditional gender roles, family members and relatives of women victims of
violence persuade them to keep their family together (AAK 1995; Yıldırım, 1998; Gülçür, 1999;
Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü [KSGM], 2009).
In accordance with a traditional common belief, violence within the family should be kept secret
from outsiders (İçli, 1994; AAK, 1995; Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998; Gülçür 1999).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-112-320.jpg)
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wife rather than an independent individual. So the right place of a married woman is her husband’s home.
And she must stay there even she is subjected to violence by her husband. Gönül, 28 years old, with one
child, tells how her relatives try to keep her family together:
“… Let’s save this family, there is a child, there is a home, let’s save it and, let’s give his wife back to him…” Ela,
23 years old, with two children, explains how her mother and aunt do not pay to attention the violence she suffered by
her husband and persuade her to keep her family together:
“… Firstly I told my aunt, and she said, it is not so important, we also are beaten, what is the problem. Do whatever
he wants. I said, no, I am not his slave. And my aunt said, you will be [his slave], he is your husband, if he beats you
even he kills you. Then I told my mother, and my mother said, it is not important, your father also beats me…” Meltem,
31 years old, with two children, has similar experience with her sisters and brothers:
“… My brothers and my sisters too, said, you went there [husband’s home] with your wedding dress and you will
return with your shroud, this suits us...”
The above explanations indicate that, convincing or forcing women victims of domestic violence by
their family members and/or relatives not to leave their husbands and keep their family together lead to
reproduction violence against women. However, the explanations also indicate that convincing or forcing
battered women not to leave their husbands and keep their family together strengthens the traditional family
values in the form of solidarity patterns which on the one hand enable the protection of the family but on
the other hand reproduce violence against women. Accordingly, repetitive expressions like “be patient”,
“endure the violence”,” tolerate him for the sake of your children”, “let’s save the family”, “you went
there with your wedding dress and you will return with your shroud”, “we are also beaten, what is the
problem” are solidarity patterns which enable the protection of family through the violation of women’s
human rights.
4.2. Solidarity patterns produced by the police responsible for prevention of violence against women
The interviewees were also asked the attitudes of the police when they call for help. According to the
answers 28 women out of 30 (%93) called the police for help at least once. The 20 women who called the
police said some of the police officers have an attitude that domestic violence against women is a part of
family relationships. Ece, 19 years old, with one child, explains her experience with the police:
“… I went to the police station. Most of the police officers there knew my husband. They asked me how I could
endure him. But there was an old one. He said, you are a married woman, you should endure him. Today’s women
leave their husbands for even just a slap…” Deniz, 34 years old, with two children explains the attitudes of the police
toward her:
“… One day the police came to our house for routine control. They asked me if I had any problem with my husband.
I said no. In that time my husband got better a little bit. One of the police officers said, what will you do if he does not
get better? Do you have any financial power? No. So you should endure him…” Burçin, 23 years old, with one child,
tells how the police officers tried to convince her to forgive her husband:
“… I didn’t go to the police station near our house. Because all the police officers there knew my husband and I
was afraid that they called him. I went to another police station. The police officers in that police station said me to
forgive my husband. They said, forgive your husband, you have a child… These kinds of events could occur in every
marriage… The police officers tried to convince me to forgive my husband a lot of times and I was tired to say them
no… I was so surprised and I thought whether if I relied on them or not… ” Çiğdem, 22 years old, has also similar
experience with the police:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-115-320.jpg)
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“… I went to police. They said, you are a family, you are young, and you can solve your problems yourselves,
return to your home… This is a small town and it would be better not to be heard your problems from the others…”
According to the law in force # 6284, Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence against Women,
the police as law enforcers, are authorized and are responsible for the prevention of violence against women.
However this research results indicate that in most cases the attitudes of the police toward the women
victims of domestic violence do not comply with the provisions of the law # 6284. Unfortunately the data
obtained from the field research cannot directly explain why the police don’t take the necessary measures
stated in the law in force to prevent the domestic violence against women. Nevertheless, within the
framework of the explanations of the women victims of violence, it can be said that the police generally
enforce the law in order to protect the family, as stated in the first part of the name of the Law # 6284 rather
than to take measures, which are clearly mentioned in the provisions of the law, to eliminate domestic
violence against women.
Thus, in case the Law in question is enforced by the police to encourage the women victims of domestic
violence to return to their homes where they suffer violence and to keep their family together, traditional
family values which lead to violence against women are reproduced by solidarity patterns. Accordingly,
repetitive expressions such as “today’s women leave their husbands for even just a slap”, “you should
endure him”, “forgive your husband, you have a child”, “these kinds of events could occur in every
marriage”, “return to your home”, “it would be better not to be heard your problems from the others” can
be accepted as solidarity patterns which enable the protection of family through the violation of women’s
human rights.
4.3. Solidarity patterns produced by the women victims of domestic violence
The interviewees were asked if they think that they somehow deserve the violence to which they have
been subjected. The answers are classified and evaluated in two groups:
1) According to the answers 18 women out of 31 (%58) at least sometimes think that they deserve the
violence. Bade, 37 years old, with one child, explains how she tried to find fault with herself as an excuse
for husband’s violence:
“… At first I always asked myself if I was guilty. Did he use violence against me because of my fault? I asked
myself if I deserved it…” Rana, 34 years old, with four children, tells how she forced herself to find an excuse for her
husband’s violence:
“… At first I thought that I was guilty, because I loved him. I thought maybe he was angry about something. His
financial situation was not good, so maybe he was worried about it. Maybe I was guilty, maybe I made him angry …”
Gamze, 31 years old, with two children, explains how she legitimizes her husband’s violence in an event that she thinks
she is guilty:
“… I keep my silence if I know that I am guilty. I say, OK! I am guilty in this event. I say, I deserve it [violence].
And I keep my silence…” Banu, 28 years old, with two children, tells how she justifies her husband’s violence in
certain cases:
“… He didn’t like my parents. He didn’t allow me to call my mother. Therefore I usually called my mother without
notice to him. One day when I was talking with my mother, he saw me and he beat me. I thought I deserved it. Because
although he didn’t want me to call my mother, I called her without notice to him …”
Just like other research results on violence against women, the results of this study also show that in
certain cases violence against women is somehow justified even by the women victims of domestic](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-116-320.jpg)
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violence. And this justification provides a basis for production and reproduction of violence against women.
It is also well known that there are some social, cultural and economic reasons such as traditional family
values, concern for children, financial dependence, behind the justification of violence by the battered
women. However, whatever the reasons behind the justification of domestic violence against women the
repetitive expressions such as “I thought I deserved it [violence], “I keep my silence” “maybe I was guilty”,
“maybe I made him angry” enable at the same time the protection of family by fostering traditional family
values in the form of solidarity patterns which ultimately lead to violence against women.
2) According to the answers, 13 women out of 31 (% 42) never think that they deserve the violence.
However there are some contradictions in their explanations. For example the explanations of 10 women
who said they never find themselves guilty for the violence they suffer give also an impression that in some
cases women may deserve the violence. For example Ezgi, 44 years old, with four children, explains why
she did not find herself guilty for the violence she was subjected:
“… I never justified his violence. We [Ezgi and her co-wife] were perfect. At home we made everything perfectly.
But we were nothing to him…” Gonca, 28 years old, with three children, also tells why she didn’t think that she
deserved the violence:
“… I never found myself guilty. I never thought like that. Because I did everything properly…”
Accordingly, although the women, who never find themselves guilty for the violence they suffer, carry
out all their responsibilities in accordance with the requirements of the traditional gender roles, they suffer
from violence. And they find it unacceptable rather than the violence against women in general. Hence, it
is thought that the explanations of the women who say they never think that they deserve the violence are
not completely different from the explanations of those who sometimes think that they deserve it. Thus, it
can be argued that the expressions such as “I never justified violence, because at home we made everything
perfectly”, “I never find myself guilty, because I did everything properly” enable the protection of the
family as an institution by fostering the traditional family values which lead to domestic violence against
women.
In fact the answers given to another question related to the justification of domestic violence against
women verify the above evaluation on the attitudes of the interviewees toward the domestic violence against
women. The interviewees were also asked their opinions about the women who behave “dishonorably”
toward their husbands and their families. 8 women out of 24 (%32) stated, for example, if a woman cheats
on her husband, this is an unacceptable, “dishonorable” behavior and she deserves the violence in anyway.
That is, she should be beaten at least. Gönül, 28 years old, with one child, explains in which cases domestic
violence against women is justified:
“… I am angry with that woman. If her husband doesn’t beat her, she doesn’t have any right to behave like this. I
think she should be beaten, she should be beaten. There are a lot of women who cannot find a warm home…” Duygu,
26 years old, with two children, also agrees with Gönül:
“… She deserves the violence. Why she cheats on her husband? If I were her husband I would have been beaten
her. If I were her husband I would have kicked seven bells out of her. If I were her husband I would have kicked her to
the curb. Why she cheats on her husband? She deserves the violence. She should be punished any way…” Pınar, 24
years old, with three children, explains why a woman who cheats on her husband deserves the violence:
“… She deserves the violence. I explain the reason. If she cheats on her husband although he is nice to her, although
he doesn’t beat her, although he is a perfect husband, she deserves the violence. As a woman I can say that she deserves
the violence. This is my opinion. I know that beating is not good. But in that case she deserves the violence. I think like
this, it is not necessary to lie…”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-117-320.jpg)
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References
Başbakanlık Aile Araştırma Kurumu. (1995). Aile İçi Şiddetin Sebep ve Sonuçları [Elektronik Sürüm].
Ankara: Bizim Büro Basım Evi.
Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü. (2009). Türkiye’de Kadına Yönelik Aile İçi Şiddet
[Elektronik Sürüm]. Ankara: Elma Teknik Basım Matbaacılık.
Crow, G. (2002). Social Solidarities. Theories, Identities and Social Change. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Giddens, A. (1994). Beyond Left And Right. California: Stanford University Press.
Gülçür, L. (1999). A study on domestic violence and sexual abuse in Ankara, Turkey. Women for
Women’s Human Rights Reports No.4.
İçli, T. (1994). Aile İçi Şiddet: Ankara-İstanbul ve İzmir Örneği [Elektronik Sürüm]. Hacettepe
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 11 (1-2), 7-20.
İstanbul Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Ceza Hukuku ve Kriminolojik Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi.
(2003). Suçla Mücadele Bağlamında Türkiye’de Aile İçi Şiddet. Ülke Çağında Kriminolojik ve
Viktimolojik Alan Araştırması ve Değerlendirme. İstanbul: Beta Basım.
Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu. (t.y.). Erişim: 27 Eylül 2015, Kadın Cinayetlerini
Durduracağız Platformu Ağ Sitesi, (http://kadincinayetlerinidurduracagiz.net/veriler/2349/agustos-2015-
kadin-cinayeti-gercekleri)
Neuman, W. L. (2006). Social Research Methods. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. (6th
ed.).Boston. Pearson Education.
Rittersberger-Tılıç, H. (1998). Aile İçi Şiddet: Bir Sosyolojik Yaklaşım. O. Çiftçi (Ed.). 20. Yüzyılın
Sonunda Kadınlar ve Gelecek Konferansı (s. 119-129). Ankara: Orta Doğu Amme İdaresi Yayınları.
Sallan Gül, S. (2011). Türkiye’de Kadın Sığınmaevleri. Erkek Şiddetinden Uzak Yaşama Açılan Kapılar
mı? İstanbul: Bağlam Yayıncılık.
Theodorson, G. A. ve Theodorson A. G. (1979). A Modern Dictionary of Sociology. New York,
Hagerstown,
San Francisco, London: Barnes & Noble Books.
Yıldırım, A. (1998). Sıradan Şiddet. İstanbul: Boyut Yayın Grubu](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-120-320.jpg)
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1. Introduction
Through our daily lives, we are constantly bombarded with images from the media. The newspapers,
the television, the internet. There is no running away from it and actually, this is what those who prepare
the advertisements pride themselves on – they can put those images anywhere, even onto our coffee cups
or right into that video we watch online. It is also not possible to miss the pattern in which women are
usually shown in these images: mostly the focus is on their bodies, with the message being their
appearance is the most important aspect of them, and other times they are mostly shown as one-dimensional
characters even on movies. They are generally regarded as something less than they are and with this
recurring attitude the media has long helped the objectification and commodification of women.
Gallagher suggests that it wasn’tuntil the 1990s, when media coverage could no longer be dismissed in
most of the world, that the issues concerning women in media stopped being regarded as of secondary
importance to “cardinal problems such as poverty, health and education” (2002:2). On the other hand, van
Zoonen states that “[the] media have always been at the centre of feminist critique” and points out that as
early as 1963, Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, was criticizing the media for its contribution to
the “myth that women could find true fulfilment in being only a housewife and a mother” (1994:11).
According to van Zoonen since “women’smovement is not only engaged in a material struggle about equal
rights and opportunities for women, but also in a symbolic conflict about definitions of femininity”, the
way women were represented in the media have always been an important battleground for the feminists.
She states that by the early 1970s a considerable collection of feminist action and thought about the
media was accumulated. One can only assume that works concerning the issues of women have become
more frequent after that since McClelland (1993:220) marks the start point of the concern for the patterns
for sexist visual imagery as the 1970s, following the rapid social change of the 1960s.
Concerns over the representation of women in the media have been on the quantitative –Gallagher uses
data on the underrepresentation of women- and also regarded the content analysis –the stereotypes and
socialization, pornography and ideology as van Zoonen groups the feminist themes in communication
studies. More and more frequently, though, the focus has been on the gender portrayal in the media and
how this may affect the way women perceive themselves as well as showing how the society sees them.
As van Zoonen notes, Tuchman, –whose work in the late 1970s is among the first to produce research
on this topic with a well-developed theoretical framework- comments on the fact that the media has failed
to represent the increasing numbers of women in the labour force and “also it symbolically denigrates
[women] by portraying them as incompetent, inferior and always subservient to men” (1994:16).
Kilbourne states in the third instalment of her Killing Us Softly video series (2000) that as the foundation
of the mass media, advertisements aim to sell products and they do; however, they also sell values, images
and “concepts of love and sexuality, of romance, of success... and perhaps most important of normalcy. To
a great extent advertising tells us who we are and who we should be.” As Kilbourne focuses, media does
so especially in regards to its visualization of women.
In this paper, it is my purpose to show the ways in which the mass media objectifies women, the
consequences of this behaviour on women and also the consequences on the way society regards women
and to see when this started. It is argued that the “liberalized women” actually served to the further the
material oppression of women within the capitalist system.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-122-320.jpg)
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for the purposes of sex and reproduction”- explaining that “[the women’s] status and subjectivity are
defined through their relationship with men”, in support of her point. Bağatur stands on the belief that
women were the primary group to be thought of as consumers –whereas men were the producers- and she
states that through “spectacularization” women were also commodified: “[W]hile women were invited to
consume more, specific guidance of this consumption towards articles related to women’s appearance made
women themselves commodities.” (2007:87).
In 1993 Steeves lists the “representations of women in global, mainstream media” as one of the Five
Global Gender Issues and also shares the belief that mass media is not a mere representative of the society
but it reinforces, not just creates, patriarchal ideologies around the world. It should, however, be noted that
Steeves’ list is questionable in the sense that it seemingly focus more on the problems of women who live
in the “developed” countries of the world. Mohanty describes this as “the typically authorizing signature
of such Western feminist writings on women in the third world” (1988:352) and is very vary of this
authorization as she draws a parallel with the “humanism as a Western ideological and political project.”
McClelland states that women and minorities are being portrayed in stereotypical roles and in
distorted or sexist images within the mass media and also believes that the visual images are powerful
means of communication which convey “intended or unintended messages” and can carry “cultural
symbolism” (1993:221). He lists the consequences of the women’s portrayal in mass media as;
objectification, seduction, self-gratification, stereotyping and underrepresentation.
Overall, it is safe to say that most scholars who write about the issues of women’s relationship to media
believe that, despite being an appropriate means to examine the production-consumption relations and
perceptions of self-image in the society, the mass media more than just reflects the social structure; it also
affects it and alters it. The two most concerning topics discussed by the literature are the lack of
representation of women in the media and how they are represented when they are.
3. A Brief Historical Review on Women’s Dual Role within the Consumer Society
“The adage ‘Consumption, thy name is women’ resonates with such venerable authority that one might
expect to find it cited in Barlett’s Familiar Quotations, attributed to some Victoria savant or to an eminent
critic of modern frippery,” are the opening words of The Sex of Things (1996). The emphasis of the book
is on the fact that despite its naturalization as an inevitable part of the women’spsychology, the “excessive
desire to consume as a peculiarly feminine quality” (Jones, 1996:27) is a historical phenomenon which
has its roots in the long transition from the aristocratic to bourgeois society (1996:1).
Of interest to note is that with the technological advances and the “industrial revolution”, it was seen as
the “men” were conquering nature. The nature had been thought of as “female” for centuries and in
accordance with this, as Jones states, women were associated with the characteristics of inconsistency,
treachery and change. The advent of liberal politics and public space, which distinguished needs as
“irrational, superfluous, or so impassioned that they overloaded the political system” and “those that were
rationally articulated and cast in terms appropriate to being represented and acted through normal
political process” (1996:15), was one of the structural changes that reinforced the propensity to feminize
the realm of consumption. In line with the view of women being inconsistent, the first set of needs defined
were identified with women.
The division of labour of the capitalist system which constructed the household with the male
breadwinner, defining his labour as the wage labour, further reinforced the differences between the
household and the market place, the female provisioners and male workers, the consumers and the producers
(1996:15). With Say’s famous theory of supply creating its own demand taken basis, the production](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-124-320.jpg)
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could “well be described as an emblematic figure for that Paris being constructed through capitalism as the
capital of desire” (1992:142).
The image of women as housewives, which ruled as the dominating image of women in the media
until the late twentieth century, reinforcing the household structure has been present since at least the
nineteenth century, too. Loeb paints a picture of how women were represented as housewives of the
Victorian England advertisements. According to Burdon’s review on her book, Loeb argues “as
consumers of the merchandise and the media that represented it, women played a major role in the
nineteenth-century commercial revolution documented by [the descriptive catalog of Victorian and
Edwardian advertisements]” (1997:348). Burton notes that the advertisements were widely based on the
gendered stereotype of the idea that the home was the woman’s domain and hence the “Victorian notions
of the ‘respectable feminine’” were pivotal to the process of the products of the commercial capitalism
being naturalized and the icons of mass production being domesticated. Burton points out that Loeb has not
concerned herself with explaining whether women were affected by these advertisements but counts that
images of consumer-as-mother was also played upon by the advertisers and tells us that it was realized that
“sexy women would sell” (Loeb, 1994:57 cited in Burton, 1997:349).
Even though the spread of images through technological advancement has definitely accelerated these
processes and the needs of the market along with women’s position in the society altered the domineering
portrayal, one thing we can draw from this review is that neither women’s role as consumers nor the
female body’s commodification were natural. They were historical processes which came to be within
capitalist society.
4. Women’s Representation in Media
The headline of the Turkish newspaper Referans for 17-18th
of April 2010 read: “Not much changed in
the advertisement strategies during the past fifty years! Sexist advertisements are dead, sexy woman is on
the shop window”. Özçelik states in the article that even though the sexist advertisements of the 1950s
which showed women as the housewives who are only born to please their husbands no longer exist, the
one thing that remains is the commodification of women. While women reshaped their existence within
the social, political, artistic and work lives, the advertisers realized that telling women to buy one product,
or else their husband would leave them, did not work anymore. As a result, advertisements moved towards
“disguised sexist” ones or ones within which women were outright used as sexual objects. The new way
to sell was to tell women that with the right cosmetic products they could look like Hollywood stars and
with the help of photoshop, unattainable goals were worked into women’s subconscious.
According to Bağatur’s analysis on the Turkish print media’s representation of women from 1930 to
1970, women in this period were not as sexualized as they are today. Rather the focus was on their role
as the housewife or their facial beauty and how they needed to keep it to hold onto their husband or to
find one. Advertisers were in a dilemma, Bağatur explains, on regards the representation of women in
advertising since the newly forming republic expected her to take upon her shoulders by simultaneously
being modern and traditional: “While they were invited to beautify themselves in accordance with the
Western norms with new cosmetics and fashion products, they were also continuously associated with
traditional roles of housewife and mother.” (Bağatur, 2007:110).
She presents advertisements of product such as butter, pasta and cleaning items showing how they
played on the stereotype of women being responsible for cooking and cleaning for the family. Where
woman is the natural bearer of the tasks such as cooking and serving for the family, it is usually the
daughter who helps her, while the man is either the husband who comes home happy to see a meal served](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-126-320.jpg)
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media’s portrayal and they do feel pressured to measure up to this ideal image, how else could have
the diet, the cosmetics, the cosmetic surgery could make millions of dollars each year?
To conclude, it should be noted that women’s oppression continues with force within our society. The
fact that this has reached such early ages is quite threatening. Even if their representation in the media is
not the primary concern of women in the entire world, considering its effects and the fact that it reinforces
the way that women are thought of, it is high time that precautions be taken on the issue.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Assoc. Prof. Sheila Margaret Pelizzon for her guidance and continued support.
As always, to my family.
References
Bağatur, Sine (2007). “Engendering Consumption: Commodification of Women through Print Media
with Specific Reference to the Turkish Case”. Unpublished Master Thesis, Middle East Technical
University
Becker, Anne E. and Hamburg, Paul (1996). “Culture, the Media, and Eating Disorders”, Harvard
Review of Psychiatry, 4:3, pp 163-167
Becker, Howard S (2002). “Studying the New Media”, Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 25, No. 3; 337-343
Brooks, D. E. and Hébert, L. P. (2006). “Gender, Race and Media Representation”, in The SAGE
Handbook of Gender and Communication, B. Dow and J. Woods (eds.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, Inc, pp 297-319
Burton, Antoinette (1997). “Reviewed work(s): Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Woman by
Lori Anne Loeb”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No. 2, pp 348-350
Ceulemans, Mieke and Fauconnier, Guido (1979). Mass Media: The Image Role and Social
Conditions of Women. Paris: UNESCO; [New York: distributed by Unipub]
De Grazia Victoria and Ellen Furlough (eds.). The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical
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Gallagher, Margaret (2002). “Women, Media and Democratic Society: In Pursuit of Rights and
Freedoms”, EGM
Ingham, Helen (1995). “The Portrayal of Women on Television”. Retrieved from:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hzi9401.html
Irigaray, Luce (1985). “Women on the Market” in This Sex Which is Not Mine, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, pp 170-191](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-129-320.jpg)
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Jhally, Sut (1989). “Advertising, Gender and Sex: What‟s Wrong with a Little Objectification?” in
Working Papers and Proceedings of the Center for Psychosocial Studies (edited by Richard Parmentier
and Greg Urban) No. 29. Retrieved from: http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/whatswrongwithalit/
Kilbourne, Jean (2000). Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women.
MacDonald, Myra (1995). Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media. London:
HodderArnold
McClelland, John (1993). “Visual Images and Re-Imaging: A Review of Research in Mass
Communication” in Women in Mass Communication, ed. Pamela J. Creedon, Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (1988). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses”, Feminist Review, No. 30, 61-88
Ono, Kent A. and Buescher, Derek T. (2001). “Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpacking the
Commodification of a Native American Woman”, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18, 23-43
Özçelik, Sıla. "Seksist Reklamlar Öldü, Seksi Kadın Vitrinde” Refereans [İstanbul] 17-18 April
2010: 11
Peach, Lucinda Joy (ed.) (1998). Women in Culture: A Women’s Studies Anthology, Massachusetts and
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
Roberts, Mary Louise (1998). “Gender, Consumption, and Commodity Culture”, The American
Historical Review, Vol. 103, No. 3, 817-844
Senghas, Sarah (2006). “Slender, Sexy Women Portrayed in Movies, TV, Magazines and
Advertisements” Retrieved from:
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Steeves, Leslie (1993). “Gender and Mass Communication in a Global Context” in Women in Mass
Communication, Creedon, Pamela J (ed.), Sage Publications, Second Edition, pp 32-60
Van Zoonen, Liesbet (1994). Feminist Media Studies. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-130-320.jpg)
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especially in the Eastern and South Eastern parts of Turkey and among families within the lower socio-
economic classes. It was not until the 1980s that Turkish women would indulge in a new wave of feminism
and address their own problems such as domestic violence, harassment, honour killings, virginity
examinations, family-oriented gender rules and the patriarchal hegemony.
One of the key achievements of the feminist movement in Turkey was the Domestic Violence Act
(1998). The Act introduced legal sanctions for not only abusive and violent husbands but for the male
members of the family. It also made it possible for the prosecutors to issue protection orders, providing
shelters for the victims, perpetrators to be kept away from the family home for a specific time period,
confiscation of his arms, and payment of alimony, and in case of noncompliance with the court order,
imprisonment for up to six months (Aslan-Akman&Tütüncü, 2013: 93).
In addition to the strengthening feminist movement, the EU candidacy also contributed to policy reform
in gender equality. The EU’s conditionality, together with Turkey’s feminist movement, resulted in
important amendments in the Constitution, and adoption of the new Civil, Penal Codes and the Labour Act,
establishment of the Women-Men Equal Opportunities Commission, approval of the Istanbul Convention
and adoption of the new Law on the Protection of the Family, and approval of the optional protocol of the
CEDAW which led the way for direct application to the CEDAW Committee for women who are exposed
to discrimination.
With the constitutional amendments in 2001 and 2004, some gender equality provisions were introduced.
In 2001, the clause “The family is the foundation of the Turkish society and based on the equality between
the spouses” was added. In 2004, the statement “[...] Men and women have equal rights. The State shall
have the obligation to ensure that this equality exists in practice”, was introduced and in 2010, “Measures
taken for this purpose should not be regarded against the principle of equality” was added after this
sentence. The famous clause on superiority of international law was also included in 2004 amendments,
stating that the provisions of international agreements that Turkey is a signatory (such as CEDAW or the
Istanbul Convention) will bear the force of law, and in case of a conflict between domestic law and a
provision of an international treaty that Turkey is a signatory, Turkey has to follow the provisions of the
international agreement.
The new Civil Code was adopted in 2001. It established the legal marriage age as seventeen for both
men and women and contended that no one can be forced to marry. It also abolished the concept of men
being the “head of family”, granted women the right to use their own last names along with their husbands’
(in 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled that women can continue using their own last names without the
husband’s surname), established that spouses need not obtain each other’s permission to work, and granted
equal rights to spouses with regards to selection of the residence, matters concerning children, and
distribution of property in case of divorce. It is worth mentioning that while Civil Code was negotiated in
the Turkish Parliament, there was serious opposition to these clauses, particularly from the nationalist-
Islamist male parliamentarians.
With the New Penal Code which took effect in 2005, sexual crimes were considered crimes against
individuals and their penalty was aggravated; the woman/girl distinction was abolished; with regards to
sexual abuse, those under the age of fifteen were considered children; marital rape was recognized; rape for
the purpose of marriage was considered a crime; polygamy was forbidden; criminal sanctions were brought
against those who practices religious marriage ceremony without an official marriage first (which is
severely undermined by the Constitutional Court ruling in 2015 which legalized religious marriages without
obtaining a civil marriage); the practice of cancelling the penalty in case the abductee and the abductor gets
married was abolished; aggravated life imprisonment was brought for honour killings.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-143-320.jpg)
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Under the Labour Law which entered into force in 2003, no discrimination based on sex or similar
reasons is permissible in the employment relationship; the principle of equal pay for equal jobs has been
adopted; it was also established that female employees cannot be dismissed due to pregnancy or birth and
nursing leaves. Maternity leave was increased to sixteen weeks, which is the standard in EU. Thus, new
arrangements were introduced to prevent the violation of women’s rights which are prevalent in the working
life, and to increase women’s participation in the workforce.
3. Analysing the AKP’s discourse on gender
As Yeğenoğlu and Coşar (2012) point out, AKP’s three terms in government (2002-2007; 207-2011;
2011-2015) witnessed increasing conservation in domestic politics, which is mainly reflected on the gender
policies. As the hopes for EU membership started to fade away during its second term, the AKP’s rhetoric
on social and cultural domains started to be dominated by a religious and conservative discourse. This is a
period in which the concepts and phrases such as “family”, “motherhood”, “anti-feminism”, “abortion is
murder”, “at least 3 children” and “gender justice” dominated AKP’s discourse on women. This discourse
is in line with the neoconservative perspective, which sees the state as having an interventionist role in the
functioning of the society, and “identifies the state, including law, with the task of setting the moral-
religious compass for society, and indeed for the world” (Brown, 2006: 697, cited in Acar and Altunok,
2013: 15). Gender-based problems are intertwined, and although it is hard to disentangle one from the other,
this section will analyse AKP’s discourse on women under three headings: discrimination against women,
domestic violence, and family and reproduction.
3.1. AKP’s discourse on discrimination against women
One of the key demands of the feminist movement in Turkey since the 1990s was the establishment of
a commission on gender equality, and its establishment was proposed in 1998. The 2003 Progress Report
of the European Commission was pointing out to the cases of discrimination in Turkey, and the necessity
of a commission as such was recommended by the UN CEDAW committee in 2005. The establishment of
a commission was realized in 2009, albeit the commission’s name was adopted not as the “equality”
commission, rather, “Women-Men Equal Opportunities Commission”, emphasizing not the equality
between men and women, but the equality of opportunity. Similarly, the office of the State Minister
Responsible for Women and Family was abolished in 2012, and replaced by the Ministry of Family and
Social Policy. In his statement, the then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, claimed that AKP was a conservative-
democratic party, and family was important to them.
On November 24th, 2014, at the International Women and Justice Summit organised by Kadın ve
Demokrasi Derneği (KADEM), Erdoğan, as the President of Turkey, said “You cannot bring women and
men into an equal position; this is against nature. You cannot subject a pregnant woman to the same working
conditions as a man. You cannot make a mother who has to breastfeed her child equal to a man. You cannot
make women do everything men do like the communist regimes did… This is against her delicate nature.”
He went on saying that "They [feminists] talk about equality between men and women. The correct thing
is equality among women and equality among men. But what is particularly essential is women's equality
before the justice. What women need is to be equivalent, rather than equal; that is, justice." He added that
Islam dignifies women as mothers but feminists do not accept the concept of motherhood; but those who
understand are enough, (referring to a blurred “we”) “we’ll continue down this path with them” (Today’s
Zaman, 24.11.2014).. This statement was not news to the public opinion, though. In 2010, when he was](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-144-320.jpg)
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to join the EU. […] We have to respect the values of Turkish society” (Zaman, 28 August 2004). The then-
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced the withdrawal of the proposal after a meeting with EU
enlargement commissioner in Brussels, however, he later expressed his anger over the situation. Referring
to the women’s groups that were protesting the proposal, and their slogan ‘our bodies and sexuality belong
to ourselves,’ he said: ‘There were even those who marched to Ankara, carrying placards that do not suit
the Turkish woman. I cannot applaud behaviour that does not suit our moral values and traditions. […] A
marginal group cannot represent the Turkish woman.’(İlkkaracan, 2008: 41-42).
Woman, in Erdoğan’s discourse, is not an activist but a mother. Both as the Prime Minister and later as
the President, Erdoğan has mentioned the sanctity of motherhood in several occasions. In the Third
Congress on Women in Local Government in 2007, he stated that there is no status comparable to
motherhood, and that is the reason why “our civilization has placed the heaven under the feet of the mothers,
and not those of the fathers”, referring to the well-known hadith (Çitak&Tür, 2008: 464). In his message
for the Mother’s Day in 2008, Erdoğan emphasized that mothers, who are responsible for the upbringing
of the children with love and tender and healthy both mentally and physically, are the pillars of the family
and social life. He went on saying that social responsibilities of mothers are not biological only, but mothers
are also the shapers of our future as a nation and carriers of our traditions and customs (IHA, 11.05.2008).
In 2014, he said "Our religion (Islam) has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood” (Today’s
Zaman, 24.11.2014). The Minister of Health had joined the ‘womanhood equals motherhood’ assertions by
claiming that “mothers should not put another career other than motherhood at the centre of their lives.
They should put raising good generations at the centre of their attention” (Hurriyet Daily News,
02.01.2015).
Erdoğan not only praises motherhood, but on several occasions, he condemned abortion. He called
abortion as ‘murder’ and said the practice should be outlawed. “It makes no difference whether you kill a
baby when it is still in its mother's womb, or after it is born,” he said. He also attacked caesarean section
deliveries, which, he claimed, limited population growth because women are advised not to have more than
two children with this method (BBC, 01.06.2012).
The emphasis on motherhood was put into practice on January 8, 2015, when Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoğlu announced the “Action Plan for Protecting Family and Dynamic Population Program”. In line
with President Erdoğan’s long-term policy of encouraging at least three children per family, the government
is promising 300 Turkish Liras for a couple's first child, 400 liras for the second, and 600 liras for the third.
Davutoğlu explained the incentives for women by saying that “Mothers [working in public office] will be
able to continue to be promoted in their positions even in their unpaid leave after birth. We will also make
arrangements for part-time work for mothers. After the end of maternity leave, mothers with one child will
have the right to work part-time for two months, mothers with two children for four months, and mothers
with three or more children for six months. They will receive full wages while working part-time.” He
added that the “protection of our family life under any circumstance is of great importance for the protection
of future generations, fundamental norms, our values and moral standards,” and the government’s program
aimed to bring about new measures to help working mothers. He went on saying that motherhood and
continuing a professional career are not categorically opposite things, and mothers who want to continue to
take care of their children until primary school will have the right to work up to 30 hours a week so that
they do not become detached from their professional life. The government also expanded parental leave to
five days so that fathers can support their wives after birth (Hurriyet Daily News, 08.01.2015). Although
these are facts that women's organizations have been voicing for years, the logic behind the new plan is not
compatible with ideas of gender equality and empowerment of women. Instead, it emphasizes that women](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-147-320.jpg)
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international law. Rather, the previously mentioned statements indicate that the method of combatting
violence is religion, by claiming that faithful men do not beat their views and women are sacred because
they are mothers. Therefore, in AKP’s discourse, violence against women is a private issue, not a societal
one, that will be eroded with being more faithful and respecting women who bear children.
Private life is not that private, too. Although the AKP governments are neoliberal in the sense that they
respect individual rights and freedoms, the reproductive rights of women obviously do not fall under this
scope. Although respect for private and family life is a fundamental human right, the AKP governments do
not hesitate to tell families the number of children they shall have, to interfere with women’s bodies on
whether to give birth or not, and the choice of birth-giving methods. In addition, sexual intercourse is only
possible if it is within the family (as discussions on criminalization of adultery indicate). In 2013, the Prime
Minister Erdoğan said that it is against his post and values that male and female university students stay
together at mixed-gender dormitories or student houses, because many things could happen in those houses.
He said that no one shall interpret this as an intervention to private life and added that “we [AKP] are a
conservative democratic party” (Milliyet, 05.11.2013).
In addition to reflecting the conservative point of view of the government, a more important indication
of this neoconservative-neoliberal mentality is that, violence against women is regarded only as physical
violence. Sexual, psychological or economic violence is not pointed out. Indeed, the latest plan of the
government, by encouraging women towards flexible work may lead the way to gradual retreat of women
from the labour force, hence, exposing women to economic violence. In a patriarchal society such as
Turkey, where honour crimes and child marriages are significantly high, the pressure on women to give
birth in increasing numbers might result in sexual and psychological violence.
Although the author of this article acknowledges that women’s unequal participation in the workforce
and in politics would amount to violence and result in increasing levels of violence against women, due to
its narrow scope, this article has left out examples of discrimination in economic life and politics. However,
the author is in the opinion that, the AKP’s recurrent governments created a neoconservative and neoliberal
patriarchy that is insensitive to women’s human rights.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-149-320.jpg)
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1. Introduction
According to Sandra Harding “[o]ne distinctive feature of feminist research is that it generates its
problematics from the perspective of women's experiences. It also uses these experiences as a significant
indicator of the ‘reality’ against which hypotheses are tested” (Harding, 1987: 7). This interpretation
becomes a resource for constructing an epistemology based on women’s experiences.
No doubt that feminist methodology and feminist epistemology based on women’s experiences are
different from the traditional science and the methodology and epistemology they are based on. In other
words, they don’t adopt the methods of positivist sciences. Of course, this differentiation introduces
theoretical debates on which feminist methodology and especially feminist epistemology are based.
Feminist methodology’s questioning dominant dichotomies such as subjective/objective,
rational/emotional, man/woman, masculinity/femininity which positivism and positivist sciences are based
on (Ecevit, 2011: 42) actually brought feminist epistemology debates into light. Once we go beyond
dichotomies which feminist epistemology criticizes and put aside the principles such as objectivity,
neutrality, and rationality; how will the social reality of women be explained? Is there a special approach
particular to women when it is about reality? What is the theoretical foundation of this approach? Can the
feminist standpoint theory provide us with a solution on this issue?
Feminist standpoint theory is based on Marx’s claim that the positions different classes occupy in the
society provide them with different perspectives about the social reality. The positions they are in also
provide them with different perspectives that present different understandings about social relations. At this
point he strengthened his argument by using working class as a base. According to Marx, it is possible to
reach a sound understanding of the capitalist social reality through this socially marginalized but centrally
important in economic sense (Tanesini, 2012: 170-171).
The first feminist standpoint theorists such as Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Dorothy Smith, took
Marxist definition as the model when explaining their theories. They explained the division of labor in
order to prove that there is actually women’s perspective. They made analyses that show women are both
marginal and central depending on circumstances (Tanesini, 2012: 171).
The argument of feminist standpoint theory in general is the idea that “feminist knowledge and the
production of feminist knowledge are based on social power and the feminist knowledge is based on
women’s experiences” (Ecevit, 2011:47). In other words it can be defined as efforts to understand the world
starting with the experiences of women.
It is important how and with which methodology feminist standpoint theory is dealt (Bora, 2008: 32).
According to some feminist theorists who base their studies on women’s experiences in daily life, a
hierarchical society makes up different standpoints staying connected to social life experiences. How can
women’s experiences in daily life be linked to feminist epistemology? What kinds of explanations can
standpoint offer us at this point? Could there be a theoretical level of women’s experiences? These questions
are important to examine feminist standpoint theory.
Like Sandra Harding, Dorothy Smith argues that the path to knowledge crosses with women’s lives and
emphasizes the importance of women’s perception and experiences in producing knowledge; however
instead of taking personal experience itself as the “real knowledge”, she prefers to take it as a starting point
(Öztan, 2013:38).
According to Bora: “it is not possible to know the experience directly.” In any case “having an
experience” is perceiving and evaluating something lived in the light of pre-acquired values, concepts and
approaches. When we regard the experience itself as the resource of knowledge, the point of view of the
experiencing person forms the knowledge. Thus, the questions related to theoretical nature of experience,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-170-320.jpg)
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formation process of perspective and social links of the discourse in which the experience is expressed are
all left out. Therefore, the experience needs to be approached not as a direct resource of knowledge, but as
a process formed by the subject among all these links, as a particular level of social reality” (Bora, 2008:
33).
Surely, there are many criticisms about feminist standpoint theory. The shared experience may not be
the right starting point for a feminist epistemology. Moreover, Joan Scott criticizes using experience as the
essential foundation of knowledge and claims that it means ignoring the constructed nature of experience
(Tanesini, 2012).
As Ecevit states, there are different arguments among feminist theorists on issues such as which
knowledge is to be chosen, how the concept of power will be perceived; how feminist knowledge will be
founded in experiences of women and in differences among women, while establishing the connection
between feminist knowledge and feminist reality (knowledge and power)” (Ecevit, 2011:50).
Having worked on the issue after the first feminist standpoint theorists, Kathi Weeks brings a different
point of view to the feminist standpoint theory that re-constitutes the feminist subject by approaching the
feminist standpoint theory from women’s laboring experiences. According to her, “[s]tandpoints are
constructed around the potential ontological and epistemological consequences of … laboring practices,
around the subjectivities that emerge from these practices. A standpoint is constitutive of and constituted
by a collective subject, in this case a feminist subject grounded in women’s laboring practices and situated
within the larger field of social relations” (Weeks, 2004: 188).
The aim of this paper is to discuss how Kathi Weeks conceptualizes women’s laboring practices and
how a feminist standpoint theory she wishes to develop based on the concepts which her feminist subject-
subjectivity approach is grounded. The discussion will be based on Kathi Weeks’ book called “Constituting
Feminist Subjects”.
2. Towards Kathi Weeks’ alternative feminist standpoint theory
According to Kathi Weeks, standpoint theorists focus on laboring practices in different ways: For
example “Sandra Harding focuses on the epistemological dimensions of standpoint theories, grounding
them in the more general conditions of women’s lives (including but not confined to laboring practices)
and the positions of marginality (1991). Patricia Hill Collins (1991) grounds black feminist thought in black
women’s experience, of which labor is one determinant among many” (Weeks, 1998: 162).
Stating that she focuses on the studies of the first feminist standpoint theorists such as Nancy Harstock,
Hilary Rose and Dorothy Smith, Weeks refers to their works (Weeks, 2013:19).
Instead of focusing on the system theories, Hartsock develops a standpoint theory where she locates
feminism within the subject’s activity and experience based on the idea that women have privileged
standpoints (in a similar way with Lucas’ claim that proletariat has a privileged, different perspective about
the social relations and this perspective reveals the reality) (Taghan, 2014: 10). For Hartsock “women's
lives differ structurally from those of men… like the lives of proletarians according to Marxian theory,
women’s lives make available a particular and privileged vantage point on male supremacy … [and]
feminist standpoint theory can allow us to understand patriarchal institutions and ideologies as perverse
inversions of more humane social relations” (Harstock, 2004:36).
Meanwhile Hartsock is criticized for universalizing women’s experiences. She assumes all women share
common experiences just because they have the same female body. She bases her assumption on
corporeality. This assumption explains why she prefers to use the term “sex” instead of “gender” (Tanesini,
2012: 181). No doubt that this standpoint theoy which ignores the differences among women and which is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-171-320.jpg)
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whose masculine enactment problematizes the category of woman but do not feel comfortable in the
category of man either.
2.2. Debate within the Movement
While a significant body of literature saw the increasing interest in butch and transgender as a negative
development, others interpreted this trend as a sign of growing radicalism in sexual politics. To illustrate
the first category of responses, Penelope (1993: 18) saw the renewed interest in butch as “lesbian
manifestation of the contemporary right-wing backlash”. Jeffreys (1989: 160) saw it as a “dangerous
development for lesbians”. Not only butch masculinity but also femmes, commonly conceived as an
inseparable part of butch dominated erotic system, have been attacked on the grounds that they were
upholding patriarchal practices of femininity. Radical and lesbian feminism problematized masculinity in
a totalistic fashion (Nguyen 667) since masculinity has been seen as “a sign, a reward and an instrument of
men’s power” (Gardiner, 2002), and as the crucial core of the continuation of male hegemony and women’s
oppression. Gardiner (2002) wrote that masculine behavior, masculine roles, and masculine beings were an
obstacle to women’s liberation. Butch women were seen as “pseudo-men” and their masculine behavior,
dressing and treatment of women were seen “an even more insidious threat to the lesbian feminist
community [since they were seen as] the enemy within” (Love, 2000:106). Jeffreys (1989: 169) called
stone-butch a form of “internalized lesbophobia” accusing the stone-butch of rejecting or denying oneself
as female and thus a lesbian. However, not all responses were negative. On the contrary, there was a
growing body of literature drawing attention to the subversive potential of female masculinity.
2.3. Queer Responses: Butler, Rubin and Halberstam
It is possible to view female masculinity as a specific gender rather than mimicry only if perception of
gender and sexuality is based on non-naturalist and non-essentialist theorization. In Gender Trouble (1990),
Butler asserts that there is no ontological status that the body retains as a pre-given materiality onto which
gender is inscribed. She also contends that acts, gestures and desire produce the effect of an internal core
or substance (Butler, 1990: 173-174). Such an understanding breaks the assumingly natural link between
the body as surface and gender as its cultural expression, which is usually presented as a relation of naturally
determined causality. Rubin’s “Thinking Sex” (1984) had already paved the way for a socially
constructivist perspective of radical sexuality politics:
The new scholarship on sexual behaviour has given sex a history and created a constructivist alternative
to sexual essentialism. Underlying this body of work is an assumption that sexuality is constituted in society
and history, not biologically ordained. This does not mean the biological capacities are not prerequisites for
human sexuality. It does mean that human sexuality is not comprehensible in purely biological terms. Human
organisms with human brains are necessary for human cultures, but no examination of the body or its parts
can explain the nature and variety of human social systems. The belly’s hunger gives no clues as to the
complexities of cuisine. The body, the brain, the genitalia, and the capacity for language are necessary for
human sexuality. But they do not determine its content, its experiences, or its institutional forms (Rubin,
1984: 149).
Drawing on Rubin’s non-essentialist view and Butler’s account of performative gender with a slightly
nuanced correction, Halberstam provided the first book-length study of female masculinity in its most
inclusive term. Historical and literary representations of female masculinity and transgender were featured](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-224-320.jpg)
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photograph or on the screen in front of us” (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 2007: 178). If elaborately defined,
an image
[…] is a collection of signs and symbols – what we find when we look at a photograph, a film still,
a shot of a television screen, a print advertisement, or just about anything. … Images generally are
visual, often are mediated – carried by the mass media – and are connected to information, values,
beliefs, attitudes, and ideas people have. … An image is a collection of signs, and each of these
signs has meaning; in any image, there are many different levels of meaning and interactions
between meanings (Berger, 2008: 61).
A strict bond is required to be formed between an image maker and a community in order that the
message conveyed via the images can be better understood by the target group of people. Each image
constitutes a message for the targeted audience. Images, thus, function in causing people to develop an
attitude and adopt new ideas or influencing their decisions on condition that a common sense can be
established in a community. John Berger (2008: 9-10) in his Ways of Seeing associates an image with
seeing:
An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of
appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance
and preserved – for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing.
[…] Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an
image depends also upon our own way of seeing.
Berger’s quotation above lays emphasis that reproduction of an image cannot be distinguished from the
subjective way of perception. Each looker can make his/her own interpretation out of the image seen. It is
possible to decontextualize an image from its original meaning that it stands for and tackle it independently
from its entity. For the sake of a nouveau meaning, the image can reformed, reproduced and reinterpreted
with a user’s subjective vision.
Creation of an image paves the way for a dichotomy: First of all, an image which is subjectively
interpreted and (re)produced through “information gathered and processed” as Rudolf Arnheim (1997: 1)
points out, by individual mind that either recollects discourses and acts performed in the past and connected
to the present, or absorbs particular information of the present to process. Secondly, collective mind which
affects the way an individual reproduces an image. The former refers to the notion that each person is
enabled to create an image via his/her past or present experiences whereas the latter sheds light on the fact
that each subjective (re)creation of an image stems from the totality of a social ambiance in which societal
or communal factors such as family, society, nationality, religion, state, national forces, educational
institutions, media, ethnicity, collective identity, gender etc. play a crucial role. Subjectivity, therefore, can
be claimed to be (re)formed in a cultural framework by social (re)constructions.
3.1. Caps: a hybrid unit of the sayable and the visible
Caps, a new medium of humour and satire in which image and discourse coexist in an eclectic style “… is
a narrative form interwoven with daily life and current issues” (Dede at al., 2014: 109). Works of caps are
“cognitive visions which the artists create through their imagination and not only include concepts
concerning the world and ideas but also display figurative characteristics” (Göğüş and et al., 1998: 65).
Caps is exploited to describe an instant state/situation or a person through an image captured from any form
of media such as picture, painting, video, film, television programs etc. and originally stated or quoted
writing which is meant to complement the image for a better depiction. Both the image and text are
individually present for their own sake at first. The maker either applies electronic photocomposition](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-235-320.jpg)
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techniques to reform the image or acts in loyalty to the original image. Most of the time, s/he
decontextualizes the image to integrate it with the written text. Finally, the sayable and the visible are
reformed in a unit constituting a “sentence-image” (Rancière, 2008: 50), after which caps, a new and
coherent context, is offered to the readers.
Pioneered by İnci Caps website and İnci Sözlük, an online interactive dictionary designed in 2009 by
İsmail Alpen and Serkan İnci, Caps movement has allowed images to be simply distributed in digital form
on a variety of social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter. Caps movement primarily
pursues entertainment and social networking websites have been Caps makers’ playgrounds. In İnci Caps
Kutsal Mizah Kırbacı written by Umut Kullar and Serkan İnci to introduce Caps movement, Kullar and
İnci (2015: 9) assert that İnci Caps can be considered to have created a new sense of humour on social
media. Millions of social media users are regarded as the founders or creators of İnci Caps movement (2015:
10), as the writers state. Kullar and İnci (2015: 11) put the dynamic process of creating caps into words
explaining that “acting arbitrarily is an obvious requirement of caps philosophy; most of the creations are,
therefore, improvised. […] It is neither a doctrine nor a paradox put forth to raise an issue. It is, in its
definite and plain term, humour”. Caps instantly come out of human nature (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 16). In
addition, “individuals’ immediate interactivity with the facts of world” and “the close relation between the
increasing power of caps and participation of users” (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 15) contribute to the dynamic
processes of creation and distribution of caps. In the process of creation, events are humorously redesigned
or a visual description is satirized (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 25). Kullar and İnci (2015: 85) call caps makers
“mizahşör”. “Mizahşör” is derived from Turkish words “mizah” and “silahşör”. In English, “mizah” means
“humour” and “silahşör”, “musketeer”. Such an appellation indicates that caps makers are regarded as those
who use their sense of humour as a gun. Humour is considered to be a highly valued individual act by caps
makers. By that individual act, a great number of people can be gathered to act collectively and “break
taboos” (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 19) of sacred values established in a given society regarding religion,
nationalism, gender, politics etc. Caps movement is considered to have created a new sense of humour on
social media, especially on social networking websites, thanks to caps makers who have created a new
sense of humour, “techno-humour” (“tekno-mizah”, in Turkish). We offer “techno-humour” as a new sense
of humour which has been developed through the digital age of the 21.century on social media platforms.
Caps makers who exploit caps to redefine cultural ideals inherited from the society and institution of family
undermine these ideals by a satirical approach. Deconstruction of the sacred values, now reconstructed in
a different manner, does not offend but makes laugh.
On the other hand, it is an unavoidable fact that “Caps makers are differentiated in cultural background
and take an individual approach to humour” (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 19). Variety in viewpoints is linked to
one’s outlook on life, character, education s/he receives from family and school, social sphere and relations,
values, religious belief, sex etc. Yet, there still remains a risk in misinterpreting and misperceiving things
and, as a result, reconstructing and reinforcing a misbelief in a community. Self-reference always relies on
one’s former experience and actual knowledge of life.
Gender is of such an utmost controversy that preconceived thoughts and discourses on being a “man or
woman” are repetitively reproduced in a community. Since this writing wishes to handle problematical
representation of woman persona and femininity through caps, it is aimed to demonstrate that not only
thoughts and discourses but also images are mediated to reproduce misconceived or misbelieved facts about
woman. Discriminative attitudes against femininity, forming a woman’s character in a restricted and,
mostly, patriarchal frame and irrational expectations about what a woman is supposed to be are not only
constituted on a discursive basis but also embodied in images, which corroborates us that “our thoughts](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-236-320.jpg)
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1965. As of 2013, this rate was 31.2%. While this is major setback compared even to the 1960s, this rate is
around 30% since the 1970s. In addition, it is observable that there is an amelioration since the second half
of early 2000s, as the rate was 23.3% in 2010. However, it is obvious that these shares are far from desired
and needed, especially compared to Turkey’s European counterparts. As it is mentioned in a 2013 report
by Women’s Labor and Employment Initiative Platform, “even though Turkey is one of the selected
emerging economies among OECD members, Turkey is ranked last with respect to women’s economic
participation” (KEİG 2013). Departing from this fact, increasing women’s participation in labor force is
listed as one of the targets of the Tenth Development Plan (2014-2018) approved by Turkish Grand National
Assembly in 2013. It is aimed to increase women’s participation rate to 34.9 % and women employment
rate to 31 % (Ministry of Development, 2014).
In this regard, thanks to the efforts of the women’s movement and the EU accession process,
policymakers developed some concerns about increasing women’s share in labor force. However, there are
some scholars who claim that these concerns are not as “innocent” as they seem. According to the advocates
of this idea “the main motivating factor has been the re-invented advantage of the policies targeting the
‘disadvantaged population’ in fostering economic development. A declining fertility rate coupled with a
larger working-age population has stimulated the economy, expanding production” (KEİG 2013). Thus,
women, as an “untapped pool of labour resource” would be used for further economic growth (KEİG 2013).
Whatever the reason is, it is obvious that there have some recent developments in Turkey to urge further
participation of women to labor force. In early 2015 the government introduced new incentives package to
encourage working women to have more children. Prime Minister Davutoğlu declared that: “Mothers
[working in public office] will be able to continue to be promoted in their positions even in their unpaid
leave after birth. We will also make arrangements for part-time work for mothers. After the end of maternity
leave, mothers with one child will have the right to work part-time for two months, mothers with two
children for four months, and mothers with three or more children for six months. They will receive full
wages while working part-time” (Hürriyet Daily News, January 8, 2015). While this incentive presents
some benefits for working mothers, it also received critical comments from some actors advocating gender
equality. Debates about the role of women in society were further fueled by the statements of Minister of
Health, Mehmet Müezzinoğlu, which he made during his visit to the first baby born in 2015. He said during
his visit that, “Mothers have the career of motherhood, which cannot be possessed by anyone else in the
world. Mothers should not put another career other than motherhood at the center of their lives. They
should put raising good generations at the center of their attention” (Hürriyet Daily News, January 1, 2015).
He repeated his idea on January 2nd
, 2015 when he was asked to comment about earlier statement:
“Motherhood is indisputably a career” (Hürriyet Daily News, January 2, 2015). These statements also
created disputes about the issue.
In sum, it is clear from all these data and debates that “the incorporation of a gender equality perspective
into the areas of employment, power and decision-making, research and budgetary and financial policies
has also not been realised” in Turkey (KSGM 2013). In order to incorporate the gender equality perspective,
it is of significant importance to raise consciousness of men about the issue. Indeed, raising awareness and
sensitivity of men to achieve gender equality is listed as one of the means of promoting gender equality in
some documents. For instance, “defining the roles of men in achieving gender equality and raising their
awareness” is listed as one of the objectives of the relevant public offices in Turkey in order to empower
women and promote gender equality, in the National Action Plan Gender Equality 2008-2013 published by
the General Directorate on the Status of Women (KSGM 2013). In this regard, the KSGM is the responsible](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-259-320.jpg)
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peaceable ‘savage’ life. Workmanship is no longer production; acquisition of goods and idleness are the
determining social values (Veblen, 1973 (1899)). In this culture, jealousy of status and meaning and value
determined by competition are attributed to commodities and consumer goods involving animistic qualities,
but not to the production process (Diggins, 1977). In brief, conspicuous consumption and idleness and
acquiring and using objects and time extravagantly began to find a place in the central values of the society.
Veblen’s critique of capitalism emerges as conspicuous consumption and the alienation of the individual
who loses his instinct of workmanship. Conspicuous consumption is symbolic because it serves the
individual to exhibit himself in society. Workmanship is only a means to acquire wealth (Veblen, 1946). In
developed capitalist societies, conspicuous consumption, wealth, and property represent power more than
need and are the main goals in life. More consumption is indicative of belonging to a higher class. A desire
to own things is displayed to develop jealousy in other individuals, - consumption is a means of displaying
the buyer’s superiority. Consumption that goes beyond necessity gets ahead of production, creating a
condition that underrates work. In a capitalist society, a social class excluded from production and work
activities expresses itself in conspicuous consumption. This class tries to display its power not by working,
but by spending (Veblen, 1946).
In conclusion, Veblen, who explains alienation on the basis of conspicuous consumption and loss of the
workmanship instinct, argues that there are two basic weaknesses that lead to the alienation of man. The
first weakness is the impact of animism and the second and most important is society’s contempt for
workmanship. Man’s salvation from alienation depends on acceptance of the workmanship instinct as the
most valuable phenomenon. The machine age enables salvation from this alienation. In Veblen’s view, the
machine and the engineer who designs it is productive, profitable and less lavish lifestyle and the society
that sustains them best, develops (Veblen 1973 (1899)).
2. The Spiritual Journey of Goddesses of Capitalism
This study focuses on the question of what lies behind the growing interest in “personal development”
among women in recent years. In this context, the fact that the women who show this tendency are usually
employed in high-income jobs is the main factor that drives one to think that the incentive behind this
growing interest may be rather socio-economic than personal. From this point of view, this study questions
the existing economic and social structure and bases its analysis on the concepts of alienation and
conspicuous consumption. The selected sample group consists of women who are employed in high-ranking
(mostly executive) positions in the private sector. Within the framework of this study, in-depth interviews
were conducted with eleven women. In addition to questions about their demographic and social
identifications, the respondents were asked about the alienation of women induced by the market society
and their consequent inclination towards personal development activities. Moreover, the ways in which
conspicuous consumption, which also involves personal development activities, reproduces alienation were
inquired about. During the interviews, the respondents expressed in their own words negative views about
capitalism.
“Well, [it is] a game in which we are wholly absorbed, such a relentless spirit...” (Interview No.1,
Istanbul)
“I mean capitalism is a system in which money is above everything else.” (Interview No.3, Istanbul)
“Capitalism is war and rivalry.” (Interview No.5, Istanbul)
“...[it is] struggle, definitely struggle” (Interview No.8, Ankara)
“Capitalism is private business...” (Interview No.10, Ankara)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-270-320.jpg)
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aspirations for personal development and a busy work life. Within this scope, the respondents were asked
what they did to rest their body and soul. Personal development activities ranked first among the responses
to this question. Yoga, meditation, NLP and breathing therapies in particular were very popular among the
interviewed women. As a matter of fact, the respondent in Interview No.10 in Ankara stated that yoga hours
had been initiated at her workplace, and that such a therapy method that could be utilized during lunchtime
or out of working hours was very rewarding for women in particular.
“Your body and soul cannot rest. I also take care of the corporate dealings of the firm. We have initiated
yoga hours for our female personnel at the firm...I will not be able to participate this evening because I
need to work; I cannot leave [the office]. It will be very good if we can boost such activities. Everyone in
the firm needs this...Fatigue has accumulated.”(Interview No.10, Ankara)
When the other interviews are also taken into consideration, it is seen that personal development, or
centuries-old Buddhist philosophy in other words, has been taken up and commercialized by the market as
nearly the sole instrument for self-transformation, self-tranquilization and self-relaxation. Women who
participate in personal development activities to avoid the “fatigue and busyness” caused by working under
intense competition in the market are themselves becoming “instrumentalized”, and in a way alienated, as
they contribute to the introduction to the market of another commercial instrument.
“You can detox by doing exercise, or feed your soul by, I don’t know, going to a (book) fair. You can
socialize or do something else... I think the economy works this way. A new sector [the respondent refers
to personal development courses] is being created; I believe it is like a soap bubble to burst soon. First a
need is invented and then they say this is the cure.”(Interview No.2, Istanbul)
While we refrained, at the beginning of the interviews, from asking in an explicit manner the question
of whether the market/work life alienated them, all respondents, when asked directly, stressed without
hesitation that they were alienated from their lives and their identity, especially as a woman. Their role as
a mother, through which they experience their female identity to the fullest, provides them with a space to
breathe. On the other hand, however, this role lays a burden on them. The respondents expressed that they
were in a disadvantaged competitive position vis-à-vis men holding similar positions in business life and
that they needed to assume extra responsibilities to overcome this disadvantage.
“Well, the work place is a battlefield for him (man); there is nothing against his nature there. We, on
the other hand, are in a struggle for existence outside of our nature. What does this do to us? This makes
us neither a man nor a woman.” (Interview No.1, Istanbul)
“Here, there are many colleagues who are fathers. But they never have a sick child or a parents’
meeting as an excuse because mothers have to take care of these... There is no fair division of labour in our
society; women have to display full performance both at work and at home. This is seen as something
capitalism entails.” (Interview No.2, Istanbul)
The responses of the interviewees to questions about capitalism, working hours and work place
competition presented qualitative differences between the interviews held in Istanbul and those held in
Ankara. Undoubtedly, the geographical, cultural and commercial peculiarities of the two cities lead to
differences in their social and economic structures. This difference became evident when the respondents
in Istanbul made more pungent comments on capitalism than those made by the respondents in Ankara. It
is interesting to observe that the same system may function in divergent ways across different geographies
within the same country, though still having disruptive effects throughout. A similar situation manifested
itself also in the responses to questions about alienation and conspicuous consumption.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-272-320.jpg)
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2. Two Empirical Studies: Moments of Erasure
A recent study published in Psychological Science offers us an interesting experiment on self-
representation and objectification of women’s bodies. In the experiment, students are asked to give an oral
introduction of themselves in one of three modes (randomly chosen) to an unseen listener. The sex of the
listener was indicated to these students at the beginning of the experiment. Of the three modes – videos of
their faces, or their bodies, or audio only – the most interesting results (although not unexpected) were from
the interaction that the female participants displayed when the video was of their bodies and their
interlocutor was male.
Women who were in the body condition and thought they were interacting with men spent less
time talking than participants in all other groups. In addition, the majority of women disliked the
body condition, indicating that they found having their bodies gazed at aversive. (Saguy, Quinn,
Dovidio, Pratto, 2010, p. 178-182)
The authors of the study set out to examine the impact of objectification during social interaction. The
aim was to analyze how ‘objectified targets’ presented themselves to others.
The study’s conclusion makes the claim that:
[w]e demonstrated that when a woman believes that a man is focusing on her body, she narrows
her presence in the interaction by spending less time talking. The impact of objectification on
talking time occurred independently of gender self-stereotyping, which suggests that attempts to
behave femininely did not account for this effect. It is important to note that the majority of women
disliked the body condition, indicating they found having their bodies gazed at aversive. In
addition, when freed from this experience, and from visual inspection more generally (i.e., in the
audio condition), women did not talk less than men. (Saguy et al., 2010, p. 181)
This is indicative of self-silencing, an erasure of self, so to speak. The authors theorize different reasons
for how and why this happens, not the least of which is the possibility that women’s cognitive preoccupation
with objectification reduces their ability to speak or have an intellective interaction (!). (Saguy et al., 2010,
p. 182)
While it may be dangerous to draw gross generalizations from one study, the implications of this sort of
inquiry seems intriguing from a feminist point of view in that it could lay the groundwork for some sort of
empirical foundation for further investigation. Not only does the study gesture towards the fundamental
importance and weight of the body in relationality, it underscores the primacy of gender in this relationality.
The reduction to an objectified entity – in this case simply the body – rendered the subjects less likely and
less able to both present and represent themselves. This is an obvious case of direct objectification and its
concomitant results, namely a silencing of self. The question that now arises is what this implies for less
direct moments of objectification. What happens when we, a la Foucault, are reduced to disciplined bodies?
And more significantly, what does this mean for women who often are no more than their bodies?
A comparable, but earlier, experiment reached similar conclusions, albeit with an explicit feminist
grounding and methodology using objectification theory (Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, Twenge,
1998, p. 269). Objectification theory argues that the “cultural milieu of sexual objectification functions to
socialize girls and women to treat themselves as objects to be evaluated on the basis of appearance”
(Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270). Taking their cue from Sandra Bartky’s preliminary definition in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-278-320.jpg)
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Femininity and Domination, the authors characterize the occurrence of sexual objectification “whenever
people’s bodies, body parts or sexual functions are separated out from their identity, reduced to the status
of mere instruments, or regarded as if they were capable of representing them” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p.
269). In other words, individuals become equated, and conflated, with their bodies; they become objectified,
becoming objects for the surveillance (and pleasure) of others. This type of sexual objectification happens
both in terms of “actual interpersonal encounters” and through the ubiquitous presence of mass media where
studies have shown women are far more often the target of objectifying treatment” (Fredrickson et al., 1998,
p. 270).
Objectification theory holds that, then, culture socializes girls and women to internalize an objectifying
perspective on their own bodies, an effect that they have termed “self-objectification” (Fredrickson et al.,
1998, p. 270). In this they mean that “individuals think about and value their own body more from a third-
person perspective, focusing on observable body attributes (e.g., “How do I look?”), rather than from a
first-person perspective, focusing on privileged, or non-observable attributes (e.g., “What am I capable of?”
or “How do I Feel?”)” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270). Self-objectification, as the authors argue, can result
in an “array of intraindividual psychological consequences,” such as the vigilant monitoring of the body
which can lead to an overconsumption of mental resources being devoted to constant bodily attention
(Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270-271). Given that the authors are attempting to study the mental
consequences of female bodily objectification, they surmise that self-objectification as a result of pervasive
and insidious sexual objectification can lead to a decreased capacity to perform mental activities (in the
experiment they used advanced mathematical tests to evaluate these mental activities) (Fredrickson et al.,
1998, p. 271).
The experiments tested three hypotheses: that self-objectification would lead to 1) body shame, the
consequence of which was restrained eating; 2) diminished math performance; and 3) being more evident
amongst women rather than men (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 273). The first experiment asked the
participants to fill out questionnaires both before and after they were randomly assigned to either wear a
sweater or a swimsuit. They were then also requested to sample some chocolate chip cookies Although the
authors claim that while their “data do support the existence of self-objectification, they do not speak to its
origins” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 281). Their results conclude that experimentally induced self-
objectification does in fact correspond to both restrained eating (due to bodily shame) and poorer
performance on mathematics tests in women (rather than men) (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 281).
In their discussion the authors reference Iris Marion Young’s phenomenological analysis of the female
body in “Throwing Like A Girl.” They argue that:
[w]hen girls and women maintain an observer’s perspective on their bodies, Young argues, they
simultaneously experience the body as an object as well as a capacity. (Fredrickson et al., 1998,
p. 272)
Young’s article on feminine bodily comportment does in fact reach this conclusion, she says “the bodily
self-reference of feminine comportment … derives from a woman's experience of her body as a thing at the
same time that she experiences it as a capacity” (Young, 1980, p. 145). Young maintains that women in
culture and society are defined as the Other, “the inessential correlate to man” (Young, 1980, p. 141). And
that women, being denied the subjectivity, autonomy, and creativity normally accorded to men, exist in a
contradictory position whereby they must, as humans, establish subjectivity, and yet by virtue of their
subjugated positioning they also exist as mere object (Young, 1980, p. 141). She ties this to the three
modalities of feminine bodily comportment: “ambiguous transcendence, an inhibited intentionality, and a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-279-320.jpg)
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discontinuous unity with [the body’s] surroundings” (Young, 1980, p. 145). These can all be derived from
the woman’s experience of her body as a thing.
All three modalities, for Young, are rooted in the fact that for feminine existence the body is lived as
both subject and object simultaneously (Young, 1980, p. 148). In other words, that which constitutes a
crucial aspect of lived experience is/becomes a thing in the world akin to other things in the world. She
accedes that any lived body necessarily has a material dimension/existence to it, for “feminine bodily
existence, however, the body is often lived as a thing which is other than it, a thing like other things in the
world” (Young, 1980, p. 148). In other words, in addition to also being a subject (as a human person) a
woman lives her body as object, constantly in a state of disunity and discontinuity (Young, 1980, p. 153-
154). Thus, not only does a sexist, patriarchal society define and register women as body (or mere object),
but the parameters within which this society exists necessarily exert an internalization of this point of view
on women thus forcing them to exist in a perpetual state of simultaneously existing as both Self and Other
at the same time.
3. Self-Knowledge, Women and The Body
From a traditional epistemological point of view knowledge qua knowledge is only adequate if it is
objectively produced and organized. That is, as a knowable object, theoretically knowledge is accessible
by everyone. However, this “everyone” is a very specific type of knower – one who is rational, objective,
free from biases and lacks an evaluative or normative perspective (at the very least they should lack an
emotionality for the objects of knowledge). I hesitate to argue that the knower lacks any normative
perspective because, at the very least, there are judgments being made whether what is being studied is
‘good’ or ‘bad’ in terms of its being objective. It is this notion of the “objective” knower which makes for
an interesting contradistinction when it comes to trying to access self-knowledge. As that which is sought
folds over onto itself as the subject looks at itself as an object, the questions of how identity is formed and
how it is informed take a more central position in shaping the way in which this knowledge is sought.
4. Postcoloniality, Identity, and Women’s Bodies
The formation of identity with regards to women and women’s bodies seems especially fecund given
the positioning of a kind of double othering that women from non-Western nations experience. In particular
I have found the postcolonial theory has both the germination of, and the grounding for, an interesting
analysis in this respect. The establishment of the Self necessarily involves the marking of the Other. And
in non-Western nations, themselves defined as the Other, I argue, it is not simply a case of a reinscription
of the Self-Other dialogue where the non-western male is the Self and the non-western woman is the Other:
a smaller yet identical unfolding of the Self-Other dialogue re-inscribed onto the non-western relationship.
This is also not a position of standpoint epistemology where the oppressed (or the periphery) has a
privileged and doubled position as knowing subject. The non-Western, sometimes Orientalized,
postcolonial subject and the identity formation of the self, that is first marked as Other and then remarked
as Other again (in the case of women), is both different in kind and degree. In other words, the formation
of the knowing subject, when she is a woman, is not simply a case of two similar layerings of otherness –
one where she is othered because she belongs to a non-Western category and another layer where she is
othered again because she is a woman. The negation of the body and Woman’s bond to the body leaves her
in this state of palimpsestic limbo where her definition of herself is written for her.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-280-320.jpg)
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Identity marks something about my position in my travels, but it is not my ground, my epistemology, or
indeed my final stand.” (interview)
Butler states that a person can organize for an identity category; however, this identity will not be a
ground for the person but it indicates the person’s present situation and it shows that identities can be
changed as a result of discourses, gender can be turned upside down and sex is not a fixed category. The
thing that we assume as an “internal” feature and identities that we build upon it is the hallucinatory effect
of naturalized gestures (Butler, 2012, p.29). When it is realized that gender has also a gender identity and
produced by repetitive performances, we can open up to a world in which it is possible to form new social
modes by eluding from the current social bodies.
7. Conclusion
We have seen that the body, which is one of the most important elements of the social interaction, is not
independent from relationality, discourses, culture, history and power. By giving reference to Michel
Foucault’s and Judith Butler’s works, I have tried to express that the body is not an ascribed entity; on the
contrary, it is a historical reality that can be interpreted through culture. The body, which is a product of
social practices, political and cultural discourses, cannot be found outside of the system that formed through
language because language constructs the body discursively. According Foucauldian point of view, we can
say that since power is described as constructive and reproductive, the body is also in a perpetually
constructible dynamic process. Power produces knowledge and knowledge produces desire, and desire
establishes an authoritarian power over the body in order to control it. Creation of gendered body causes
the concept of “natural sex” to enter into the lives of the individuals; therefore, the construction of sexuality,
which is easy to control and discipline. What Foucault named as modern power reproduces power over the
control and surveillance of the body and the most obvious internalization form of the norms depend on the
bodily repetitions. This is what Butler refers to as performativity; that is to say, body becomes gendered by
meeting various cultural norms and wearing them. In this respect, it can be deduced that there are no fixed,
ascribed and inborn social gender and sex. Since from the very beginning, Butler has always said that sex
is also a gender. Accordingly, gaining a critical point of view over the relationship between sex, sexuality,
gender, sexual orientation and desires is very important in terms of eluding from the fixed categories that
power imposed upon us.
References
Berktay, F. (2009, Bahar). Feminist teorinin önemli bir alanı: cinsellik. Cogito, 2887, 58.
Butler, J. (2001). There is a person here. (Breen, M.S, Interviewer) [web site]. retrieved from
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Butler, J. (2007). Toplumsal cinsiyet ve bedenin maddeleşmesi. Cinsiyetli olmak (ss.75). İstanbul: Yapı
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years, working women and men have started forming their own gün groups with their workmates where
they only rotate money.
The aim of this study is to explore the functions of gün meetings as a gendered field which is a specific
leisure time practice of Turkish women. My research questions are the following: Do güns reproduce
traditional gender roles and gendered division of labor? Do "güns with savings" contribute to women's
independence as a specific form of leisure activity among women? Older reception days were the fields of
women where they could gain a certain sense of "recognition" within their group. Today, along with the
"güns with savings", women’s freedom to use money is added to the function of recognition. The
information used in this study is based on an ethnographic study of two gün groups in Ankara:
Karadenizliler (from the Black Sea) and Komşular (Neighbors), respectively.
2. Conceptual Terrain
The concept of gender needs constant reworking and redefinition based on new empirical evidence since
gender relations undergo continuous flux and reinvention. In this sense, gün meeting is a fruitful area for
further research where different characteristics of gender such as difference, inequality and oppression are
experienced by women. Since mixed-sex socializing is incompatible with the norms of patriarchal control
such as gender segregation, gün meetings become an acceptable or appropriate way of socializing for
women. In this context, I define gün as a gendered leisure time activity of Turkish women. As argued by
Skeggs, we become gendered through being lived, just as we become classed, raced and sexed (1997, p 9).
Women and men become gendered through the social processes that produce gender. Beginning from earlier
ages, individuals take on gendered qualities and characteristics through learning masculinity or femininity
(Wharton, 2005, p. 31). I will analyze the gendered relations in gün meetings using the conceptual
framework of Pierre Bourdieu who studied social processes through the concepts of habitus, field, and forms
of capital when formulating his general theory of practice.
In Bourdieu's theory of practice, everyday life is the area where power relations both arise and are
continuously reproduced in different fields. He analyzes the processes in which actors consciously or
unconsciously internalize power relations with his concepts like habitus, field and symbolic violence.
Although Bourdieu has not much emphasis on gender, there are parallels between Bourdieu's theory and
Feminism since both of them stresses the experiences of actors and the role of power relations in social life.
For this reason, the methodological approach of this study is based on a synthesis of feminist point of view
with a Bourdieusian approach. Bourdieu's methodology shares the same principle with Feminism which
attributes a vital role to subjective experiences in knowledge production although it does not fundamentally
specify women's experiences.
2.1. The Concept of "Gendered Field"
I conceptualize my research topic, namely women’s gün meetings, as ‘gendered fields’. Hence I attend
to expand my research on gün meetings by drawing on Bourdieu's conceptual framework to understand
gendered relations better. Bourdieu's approach is one of the important attempts to build a link between
subjective and objective relations in social science. As Ritzer claims, this is the distinguishable
characteristics of Bourdieu's theory where he offered "a distinctive theory of the relationship between
agency and structure" (2011, p. 536). Bourdieu's famous concept habitus refers to "the mental structures
through which they [actors] apprehend the social world ... the product of the internalization of the structures
of that world" (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 18). Relationality is the critical aspect of Bourdieu's theory. As concepts,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-294-320.jpg)
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References
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Açısından Kabul Günlerine Yönelik Bir Tutum Çalışması, Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi, Vol. 58, pp.
45-76.
Bellér-Hann, I. (1996). Informal Associations among Women in North-East Turkey, in Rasuly-Paleczek,
G. (ed.) Turkish Families in Transition, Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang, pp. 114-138.
Benedict, P. (1974). The Kabul Günü: Structured Visiting in an Anatolian Provincial Town,
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1, Visiting Patterns and Social Dynamics in Eastern
Mediterranean Communities (Jan., 1974), pp. 28-47.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social Space and Symbolic Power, Sociological Theory, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring,
1989), pp. 14-25.
Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Büyükokutan, A. (2012). Geleneksel Altın Günlerine Halkbilimsel Bir Yaklaşım: "Muğla Örneği",
Karadeniz Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Vol.4 (14), pp. 117-133.
Delaney, C. (1991). The Seed and The Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society,
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Ekal, B. (2006). How a Kaynana Should Behave? Discussions on the Role of Mothers-in-Law in Two
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Kinship: A Comparative Perspective, pp. 1-17.
Huizinga, J. (1950 [1938]). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Boston: Beacon Press.
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Caring Work, Sociology, Vol. 43(1), pp. 45-66.
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Women in Modern Turkish Society, London; Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Zed Books, pp. 89-110.
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No. 3 (Nov., 1999), pp. 555-568.
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pp. 520-544.
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Turkish Families in Transition, Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/59efbcce-7adc-4ccf-9a99-524cc539d6df-160605031959/85/My-published-research-301-320.jpg)
My published research
- 3. Page | ii Abstractingand nonprofit use of the material is permitted with credit to the source. Citation is allowed only with reference details. Instructors are permitted to print isolated articles for noncommercial use without fee. The authors have the right to republish, in whole or in part, in any publication of which they are an author or editor, and to make other personal use of the work. Proceedings of Papers of International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies 2015 http://gws.metu.edu.tr/buildingbridges/ Copyright©2015 By Gender and Women’s Studies; Graduate School of Social Sciences, Middle East Technical University All rights reserved. All the abstracts of the papers in the proceedings have been peer reviewed by experts in the Advisory Board of the conference. Responsibility for the contents of these papers rests upon the authors. ISBN: 978-975-429-353-1 First electronic published version: April, 2016 Published by Gender and Women’s Studies, GSSS, ODTÜ gws@metu.edu.tr Ankara, TURKEY Cover design: Yasemin Saatçioğlu Oran
- 4. Page | iii GWSCONFERENCE 2015 COMMITTEES Scientific Committee Conference Chair: Prof. Yıldız Ecevit Prof. Ayşe Ayata Prof. Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör Prof. Ayşe Saktanber Prof. Feride Acar Prof. Mehmet Ecevit Assoc. Prof. Canan Aslan-Akman Assoc. Prof. F. Umut Beşpınar Assist. Prof. A. İdil Aybars Advisory Board Prof. Aksu Bora Hacettepe University Prof. Alev Özkazanç Ankara University Dr. Anita Biressi University ofRoehampton/London Aslı Davaz Women’s Library and Information Center Assist. Prof. Aylin Akpınar Marmara University Prof. Ayşe Durakbaşa Marmara University Assoc. Prof. Ayşe Gül Altınay Sabancı University Prof. Belkıs Kümbetoğlu. Yeditepe University Assist. Prof. Berna Zengin Özyeğin University Dr. Berrin Balay Middle East Technical University - GİSAM Prof. Bertil Emrah Oder Koç University Assoc. Prof. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu Yeditepe University Prof. Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı Koç University Prof. Deniz Kandiyoti University of London (SOAS) Prof. Emiko Ochiai University of Kyoto Prof. Fatima Sadiqi Isis Center for Women and Development Prof. Fatmagül Berktay İstanbul University Assoc. Prof. Fatoş Gökşen Koç University Assist. Prof. Fevziye Sayılan Ankara University Assoc. Prof. Filiz Kardam Çankaya University Assist. Prof. Füsun Çoban Döşkaya Dokuz Eylül University Prof. Gökçe Yurdakul Humboldt University Assis. Prof. Gökten Doğangün Middle East Technical University Prof. Gül Özyeğin The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Prof. Gülay Toksöz Ankara University Dr. Gülbanu Altunok Brown University Prof. Gülriz Uygur Ankara University Prof. Gülser Kayır Akdeniz University Prof. Günseli Berik University of Utah Prof. Güzin Yamaner Ankara University Dr. Handan Çağlayan Ankara University Prof. Hande Birkalan Gedik Yeditepe University Prof. Helma Lutz University of Frankfurt Assoc. Prof. Hülya Adak Sabancı University Prof. Hülya Şimga Koç University Prof. Hülya Tanrıöver Galatasaray University Assist. Prof. İrem İnceoğlu Kadir Has University Assoc. Prof. İlknur Yüksel Hacettepe University Assoc. Prof. İnci Kerestecioğlu İstanbul University Prof. İnci User Marmara University Assoc. Prof. Leila Simsek Rathke Marmara University
- 5. Page | iv Prof.Maria Tamboukou University of East London Assoc. Prof. May Lou O'Neil Kadir Has University Prof. Melek Göregenli Ege University Assoc. Prof. Melda Yaman Öztürk 19 Mayıs University Assoc. Prof. Meltem Dayıoğlu Middle East Technical University Prof. Dr. Mine Tan İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Assist. Prof. Nadide Karkıner Eskişehir Anadolu University Assoc. Prof. Nahide Konak Abant İzzet Baysal University Prof. Nermin Abadan Unat Boğaziçi University Dr. Nihal Çelik Lynch Saint Anselm College Prof. Nurcan Özkaplan Işık University Assoc. Prof. Nurten Birlik Middle East Technical University Prof. Nüket Kardam Monterey Institute of International Studies Prof. Nükhet Sirman Boğaziçi University Prof. Olcay İmamoğlu Middle East Technical University Pınar İlkkaracan Boğaziçi University Assoc. Prof. Pınar Melis Yelsalı İstanbul University Assist. Prof. Reyhan Atasü Topçuoğlu Hacettepe University Assoc. Prof. Dr. Saniye Dedeoğlu Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Prof. Sedef Arat-Koç University of Ryerson Prof. Serpil Çakır İstanbul University Prof. Serpil Sancar Ankara University Prof. Şule Toktaş Kadir Has University Assoc. Prof. Sevgi Uçan Çubukçu İstanbul University Prof. Sevil Sümer University of Bergen Prof. Şahika Yüksel İstanbul University Prof. Şemsa Özar Boğaziçi University Prof. Şevket Bahar Özvarış Hacettepe University Prof. Tülay Özüerman Dokuz Eylül University Dr. Ulrike M. Vieten Queen’s University Prof. Vivienne Wee SIM University Prof. Yakın Ertürk Middle East Technical University Prof. Yeşim Arat Boğaziçi University Prof. Zehra Kabasakal Arat University of Connecticut Organizing Committee Conference Chair: Prof. Yıldız Ecevit Coordinator: Funda Dağdelen Hilal Arslan Cansu Dayan Hakan Türkoğlu Zahra Ganji Doğa Ortaköylü Günce Demir Güner Yönel Deniz Fenercioğlu Student Support Team Graphic Design Yasemin Saatçioğlu Oran
- 6. Page | v FOREWORD Onbehalf of the Advisory Board and Committees of the GWS Conference I am pleased to present you the e-book of proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women's Studies organized in the honor of the 20th Year Anniversary of Gender and Women's Studies Graduate Programme at Middle East Technical University in October 9-11, 2015. The main objective of the Conference was to share the knowledge and experience accumulated in the field of gender and women's studies both specifically in Turkey and in a wider sense around the world. For this, the Conference aimed at founding a base to discuss theoretical and discursive issues of this interdisciplinary field on the grounds of knowledge and politics. As such, it was expected to provide opportunities for intergenerational meetings, and create an intellectual and academic milieu for collaborative studies. A group of academics and intellectuals that pioneered women-oriented studies in Turkey, and activists hand in hand with them concerted efforts to build intergenerational bridges by sharing their work along with the critical moments and events that influenced their lives academically and politically in six sessions throughout two days. All the same an experience-sharing activity was organized by the alumni of Middle East Technical University Gender and Women's Studies Graduate Program. They shared repercussions and reflections of being a GWS student on their professional, intellectual and daily lives. Besides, three branches of activities of arts welded the Conference program to reveal the intertwinement of gender and women's studies with the aesthetics and creativity of life. We regretfully ended our conference, which had started in enthusiasm with the participation of widely dispersed national and international academics, in the evening of the second day due to the vicious bomb attack occurred on the 10th of October morning in Ankara Train Station. A shared press release was written out by the participants condemning the attack. In this e-book, you will find the proceedings of our 115 participants. With the aim of making the searching convenient, we have not grouped the proceedings according to their subjects; instead, preferred to sort them in alphabetical order of the names of the authors. I would like to thank everyone who shared our enthusiasm and made a contribution to this Conference: Members of Advisory Board and Scientific Committee for their contribution in the evaluation of the abstracts; Organization Committee and Voluntary Students Support Team for their dedicated work; academics for their presentations, and finally graduate students of our programme for their effort in the publication of this e-book. Prof. Yıldız Ecevit Chair Gender and Women's Studies Graduate Programme Graduate School of Social Sciences Middle East Technical University
- 7. TABLE OF CONTENTS Gender,Nationality and Public Space: The Case of Emirati Women in Dubai 1 Anke Reichenbach Gender and Use of Social Power: A Study on the Perception of Private Sector Employees in Turkey 9 Asena Altın Gülova, Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz How to Encounter the Historical Omission of Women in the Process of Acquisition of Documents 19 Women-Centered Archives Aslı Davaz Can All Women Fight Together? A Discussion Between Ideals and Realities: Alliance and Diversity in 28 Women’s Movements in Turkey Aslı Polatdemir, Charlotte Binder Liberal, Critical and Rejectionist Discourses: Voices of Women Activists on Civil Society in Turkey 38 Asuman Özgür Keysan Media Coverage of International Women’s Day Demonstrations in Turkey After 2002 48 Atilla Barutçu, Figen Uzar Özdemir Gender Perspective in Electronic Governance Initiative in India: Use of ICT for Women Empowerment 57 Avneet Kaur Women at Higher Education in Turkey: What Has Changed in 100 Years? 67 Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevik, Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör Look Beyond What You See: Engendering Central Anatolian Prehistory 77 Aysel Arslan Women’s Employment and Fertility: Event-History Analyses of Turkey 87 Ayşe Abbasoğlu Özgören, Banu Ergöçmen, Aysıt Tansel Solidarity Issues in Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey 97 Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın Women’s Representation in Media: From “The Housewife” to “Sex Object” 107 Ayşe Savaş From Arranged Marriage to Marriage Brokers: Reconstruction of a Cultural Tradition in Border Regions 117 Ayşe Yıldırım A Discourse Analysis on Turkey’s Justice and Development Party Government on the Human Rights of 127 Women Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu The Long Journey of Women Into Politics: Will It Ever Be Possible to Reverse the Bad Fortune? 137 Bahar Taner, Esra Arslan, Nilay Hoşaf
- 8. Women’s Knowledge in“Natural” Food Production 147 Bermal Küçük A Different Approach to Feminist Standpoint Theory: Kathi Weeks’ View on Women’s “Labor” Practices 155 Berrin Oktay Yılmaz, Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi Women’s Movements/Groups and the State: Exploring Two Patterns of Engagement 165 Betül Ekşi The Ottoman Empire’s First Private Women Courses (Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi) and Its Periodical Bilgi 175 Yurdu Işığı Birsen Talay Keşoğlu Appearance as Reference: Women and Lookism in the Labor Market 185 Bojana Jovanovska The Impact of Educated Women in the Upbringing of Children 195 Brikena Dhuli, Kseanela Sotirofski Examining Pro-Kurdish Political Parties From Women’s Representation 202 Burcu Nur Binbuğa Masculine Performatives of Female Body: Queering the Hegemonic? 208 Canan Şahin Reproduction of Masculine Language Through Caps 218 Çağrı Yılmaz, Kübra Özdemir Popular Feminism and the Contemporary Construction of Femininity in Popular Women’s Magazines in 227 Turkey in the 1990s Çiğdem Akanyıldız Crisis of Islamic Masculinities in 1968: Literature and Masquerade 233 Çimen Günay-Erkol, Uğur Çalışkan How Male University Students Perceive Women? 243 Defne Erzene Bürgin, Selin Bengi Gümrükçü The Alienation Problem of “Women” in the Market 253 Derya Güler Aydın, Bahar Araz Takay Women’s Bodies as First Colony: A Study in the Hybrid Feminist Personal 262 E. Burcu Gürkan Becoming a Gendered Body: Feminist Analysis of Gender and Power Relations 269 Ebru Eren Gendered Fields in Women’s Leisure Time Experiences: A Study on the “Gün” Meetings in Ankara 278 Ebru Karayiğit
- 9. Gendering the Innovator:The Case of R&D in Turkey 288 Ece Öztan, Setenay Nil Doğan Approaching Bosnian War in Light of ‘Violence Against Women’ and ‘Gendered Violence’ 297 Efser Rana Coşkun Role of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Production of New Forms of Social Control and 307 Discrimination Elena Bogomiagkova, Marina Lomonosova Bride Kidnapping Elopement in Violence Against Women Context: The Cases of Ardahan and Rize 317 Elif Gazioğlu Terzi Moderation vs. Militancy: The Rhetoric of American Suffrage Movement 326 Emine Geçgil Feminist History in the Pursuit of Fatma Aliye 333 Erman Örsan Yetiş How Women Were Represented in the War Propaganda Posters? Soldiers, Mothers and Families 343 Esin Berktaş Trapped in Between State, Market and Family: Experiences of Moderately Educated Divorced and 353 Widow Women Esra Gedik Global Economy and New Gender Identities: A Study of Saleswomen in Turkey 363 Esra Sarıoğlu Gendered Engineering Culture in Turkey: Construction and Transformation 372 Ezgi Pehlivanlı Kadayıfçı Feminist History of Periods of “Stagnation”: Women’s Movement in the 1950s 382 Ezgi Sarıtaş, Yelda Şahin Akıllı Booze and Women: Gendered Labor Market Outcomes of Unorthodox Consumption in Turkey 392 F. Kemal Kızılca The Impact of Colonization Feminism in Colonized Countries: The Case of Algeria With the French 402 Colonization Fatima Taourite Home-Based Working Women Within the Context of Recent Developments in the Social Reproduction 409 Theory: The Turkish Case Fatma Özlem Tezcek, Özlem Polat Blur on Gender and Its Relevancies in Symons’ Poem “White Heliotrope” 419 Ferah İncesu
- 10. A Discourse Analysisof Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP): Agonistic Politics With a Feminist 429 Perspective Fethiye Beşir Projections of the Socio-Historical and Legal Burden on the Contemporary Narratives of Women in 437 Turkey Fulya Pınar Gender and Cultural Criticism in Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden 447 Funda Civelekoğlu Prostitutes in Ottoman Archival Sources 456 Füsun Çoban Döşkaya, Ahmet Aksın Demographic Change in Europe: Fertility, Child-Friendly Policies, and Their Implementation 466 Gabriela Pavlova Fresh Pair of Eyes: The New Story of Ammu’s Body in The God of Small Things 476 Gökçem Menekçe Gökçen Susan Rawlings’ Enclosed Freedom and Eventual Estrangement in “To Room Nineteen” by Doris Lessing 484 Gökşen Aras Freya Stark: A Life of Challenges 492 Gönül Bakay, Sevinç Elaman-Garner A Powerful Tool for Female Struggle: Feminist Art 500 Görkem Kutluer Gender in Turkish Words 509 Gülcan Çolak Woman Killing is Political and What Should Be Done to Prevent Femicide? 519 Gülser Öztunalı Kayır, Ayşe Kalav Technologic or Technophobic Youth: Preliminary Survey on Gender 528 Hasan Tınmaz, İlker Yakın Women’s Status in Korean Society 537 Hatice Köroğlu Türközü Woman Image in Comedies of Aristophanes 545 Hatice P. Erdemir, İlkay Şahin A Female Domestic Worker’s Travel and Urban Story: Understanding “Urban” in Her Eyes 555 Hilal Kara The Success and Challenges in Institutionalization of Women/Gender Studies at Sana’a University- 565 Yemen Husnia Al-Kadri, Bilkis Zabara
- 11. Gendering Democratic Policy-Makingin Turkey: Kemalist Women’s Activism in the Justice and 574 Development Party (AKP) Era Hürcan Aslı Aksoy Old Women in Fiction: The Novel as Research 584 Inez Baranay Engendering Health Information System in Bangladesh: Locating Health Care Needs of Violence Victims 591 Ishrat Khan Barsha Housewives ‘in Progress’: Stories of Gender-Balanced Development in Southeast Anatolia 601 K. Zeynep Sarıaslan Professional Activity of Elderly Women in Poland in the Context of Intergenerational Perspective in 610 Women’s Knowledge Analyses Karolina Thel Feminism in Yemen: Uneasy Path, Unwalked Miles, and a Disguised Movement 619 Kawkab Althaibani Does Exposure to Female Role Models Increase Leadership Aspirations: A Randomized Experiment in 628 Civic Involvement Projects Kerim Can Kavaklı, Öykü Uluçay Postmodern Ecofeminist Theories and Politics 638 Lejla Mušić The Role of Workplace Clothing in Creating Social Identity: A Case Study With Professional Women in 648 Istanbul and Izmir Leyla Bulut, Pınar Börü Fathers Finding Themselves: New Symmetries and Different Models 658 Luisa Miniati Cinema, Popular Culture and the Emancipation of Women at the Beginning of the 20th Century in the 662 Polish Galicia Malgorzata Radkiewicz Gender Matters: International Mobilisation for the Protection of Women Human Rights Defenders 669 Marina Lourenço-Yılmaz Talking Gender and Sexuality Through Literature: A Comparative Analysis of The Vagina Monologues 679 and İşte Böyle Güzelim as a Case in Point Mehmet Erguvan Can Women Have Gold Collars? Work Life for Educated Women in Turkey 689 Meltem Yılmaz Şener With the Silences, Murmurs, Sighs of Elderly Women: A Discussion on Feminist Epistemology 699 Meral Akbaş, Nihan Bozok
- 12. Augustine: The Resistanceof Rebellious Hysteric to Patriarchy 705 Meryem Senem Sarıkaya The ‘State of Exceptions’ in Laws: Sexual Violence Against Women in India 712 Minakshi Buragohain The Perception of the Middle Class on Domestic Violence Against Women and Laws Regarding 720 Punishment: A Comparative Study at the City of Sylhet in Bangladesh Mozharul Islam Sue for Love? Liability of Third Party in Marital Damage 730 Nadire Özdemir Negotiating Gendered Liminal Identities at the Borderland in Arab American Women Literature: Laila 738 Halaby’s West of the Jordan as a Case in Point Nawel Zbidi Suat Derviş (1905-1972): A Friend of Soviet Union 745 Nazlı Eylem Taşdemir An Interactivity and Knowledge Sharing Ambiance: East Marmara Region Woman Academy Project 755 Nesrin Akıncı Çötok, Selcen Vodinalı Female MPs, Party Quotas and Feminist Institutionalism: A Case Study of the Parties in the 24th Term of 763 Turkish Parliament Nigâr Değirmenci Gayatri Spivak and Impact of Her Postcolonial View on IR Discipline 773 Nigar Shiralizade Mainstreaming Gender Sensitive Disaster Risk Management 783 Nilgün Okay, N. Fandoğlu, İ. İlkkaracan, A. Akalın “You See That Driver? I Bet That’s a Woman!”: A Social Psychological Approach to Understand Sexism 789 in Traffic Nilüfer Ercan, Özden Melis Uluğ Women in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: A View From Inside 799 Oana Gui Love and Eros in the Old and New Testament Tradition 808 Olena Astapova Comedy and Women: The Problem of Gender in Hokkabaz 818 Özge Güven Akdoğan Understanding Migration: Bulgarian-Turkish Migrant Women’s Narratives 828 Özge Kaytan Women and News in Turkey: ‘Walking on a Tightrope’ 838 Özlem Akkaya
- 13. Fountain Pens: GenderAsymmetries in Managerial Careers 848 Özümcan Demir, Pınar Kaygan From Orientalism to Cultural Relativism: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Field Studies and 858 Ethnographies on Women and Islam in Turkey Petek Onur Wedding Photos and Zeitgeist: A Reading on Femininity, Masculinity, Love, and Marriage 868 Pınar Eke Women and Gender Studies: Insiders’ View 878 Pınar Ezgi Burç Education and Experience in Nursing: A Comparison Between Vocational School and University 887 Graduates Rana Çavuşoğlu Atatürk and the Turkish Women’s Revolution as Seen Through Italian Eyes 895 Raniero M. Speelman Going Public: Women’s Narratives of Everyday Gendered Violence in Modern Turkey 904 Selda Tuncer The Surname of Turkish Women: A Question of Turkey 914 Seldağ Güneş Peschke Confusion of Terminology on Policies for Gender Equality 922 Senem Ertan Blurring the Boundaries Between the State and Autonomy: The Case of Women’s Organisations in 932 Eskişehir Serap Suğur, Temmuz Gönç, İncilay Cangöz, Hatice Yeşildal The Usages of Gender and Sex Terms in Two Turkish Translations of Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary 942 Serpil Yavuz Özkaya Sexism: Ambivalent Sexism 950 Sezer Ayan, Veda Gökkaya Bilican Women Bodies at Trial by Ordeal Since Christianity to Trier Movies 960 Sibel Kibar The Active Agency of Iranian Women in Post-Revolutionary Era 969 Sima Nabizadeh, Türkan Ulusu Uraz Women in Technology: Google Women Tech-Makers Case 979 Sinem Güdüm Female Action Hero vs. Male Dominance: Female Representation in Mad Max: Fury Road 986 Sotirios Bampatzimopoulos
- 14. Public Policy onGender Equality in Turkey: Political Representation 994 Şenay Eray Who Is the Owner of My Body: Woman, Body Politics and Eating Disorders 1002 Yasemin Güniz Sertel Muslim Women’s Role in Colonial Punjab: A Case Study of Jahanara Shah Nawaz 1011 Zahida Suleman The Rise of Women’s Autonomy: Impacts of Male Migration on Women in Vrang, Wakhan – A Rural 1019 Area in Tajikistan Zarina Muminova The Anxiety of Female Authorship in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe 1027 Zehra Aydın An Existential Alliance of Byronic and “Lilithian” Heroes 1035 Zuhal Yeniçeri, Leman Korkmaz, Doğan Kökdemir Reflections of Islamic Feminism on the Ground in Spain 1044 Züleyha İzin
- 15. Anke Reichenbach /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 1 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Gender, Nationality and Public Space: the Case of Emirati Women in Dubai Anke Reichenbach* Zayed University Dubai, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, United Arab Emirates Abstract This paper investigates how young Emirati women navigate Dubai’s urban landscape. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, it will explore the multiple ways in which gender and nationality intersect in Emirati women’s negotiation of public space. While privileged in terms of nationality and class, Emirati women experience various restrictions on their mobility due to their gendered identities. As elsewhere in the Middle East, women’s presence in public space is perceived as fraught with risks due to local notions of female propriety and women’s class and status. This paper argues that young Emirati women are most vulnerable in those public places that are frequented by their own compatriots since the judgment and gossip of other Emiratis can crucially affect a woman’s reputation. Thus, women need to carefully manage their public visibility in places categorized as “Emirati”. In contrast, those parts of the city that are dominated by foreign residents and tourists seem to offer a respite from such gendered constraints, but young national women often also see them as culturally alien and unwelcoming to Emirati nationals. With its analysis of the intersection of gender, nationality and the urban condition of a Middle Eastern city at the beginning of the 21st century, this paper seeks to contribute to the growing body of literature aimed at a nuanced understanding of the multiple factors that shape women’s complex relationship with public space. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women; public urban space; Dubai; Middle East * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +971 44021383. E-mail address: Anke.Reichenbach@zu.ac.ae.
- 16. Anke Reichenbach /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 2 1. Introduction Amira, a young Emirati mother in her late twenties, liked living in Dubai. She enjoyed the cosmopolitan atmosphere in the city whose population consists of more than 200 different nationalities, and she appreciated how the city catered to different lifestyles and consumer tastes. But in her view, this “mixture of people” came at the price of heightened public scrutiny: “You see, there is us, the Emiratis, and them, the foreigners. And they will judge you at some point. Everything you do will be noted, ‘Oh, look at that Emirati woman!’ And Emiratis judge you as well: You have to appear open-minded and modern, not too conservative or old-fashioned in your behavior. And yet you also have to show that you follow the rules applying to you, your nationality, your gender, the category of married women, of all kinds of categories. Again, they will judge you at some point. And they will judge you for what you are wearing, if you are wearing the right clothes, if your make-up is too heavy or all kinds of things. So you cannot escape social scrutiny.” In this paper, I want to explore how young Emirati women navigate the city’s public spaces in light of this strongly felt exposure to different kinds of judgement by diverse audiences. How do Emirati women manage their public visibility in order to protect their reputation and avoid potentially harmful gossip? How do they perceive, appropriate and produce the city’s public spaces in Dubai’s urban environment at the beginning of the 21st century? And how do gender, nationality, and other factors such as socioeconomic status intersect in women’s use of public space? I will first present an overview of anthropological findings on women’s complex relationship with public space in Middle Eastern cities. Following a brief description of Dubai’s recent urban transformations, I will focus on Emirati women’s discourses about the city and their everyday practices in public space. I will show how women create their own geographies of Dubai in order to negotiate individual needs and desires against the backdrop of local social norms that place various restrictions on their mobility due to their gendered identities. My paper is based on participant observation over the past eight years in Dubai, on many informal conversations with Emirati friends and students, and on semi-structured interviews with twelve young Emirati women from Dubai between the ages of 22 and 36. Their narratives revealed discernible patterns in how the young women perceived and categorized urban spaces, how they used them, and how they employed various tactics that aimed at expanding their freedom of movement while simultaneously safeguarding their reputation. 2. Women and public space in Middle Eastern cities Early studies on the gendered divisions of Middle Eastern cities had postulated a clear dichotomy: Public urban spaces such as streets, markets or coffeehouses were seen as male, while private spaces like the house, the courtyard and sometimes the neighborhood alley were perceived as the realm of women (cf. Bianca 1991, Mernissi 1985). More recent studies have criticized this strict dichotomy as an imposition of Western cultural constructs and scientific categories on Middle Eastern societies, thus neglecting Arab and Islamic notions of space as well as historical developments (cf. Abu-Lughod 1990, Afsaruddin 1999, Dahlgren 2010, El Guindi 1999, Nelson 1974, Newcomb 2009). According to Asma Afsaruddin, women’s negotiations of private or public space need to be studied in their particular context, taking into consideration factors such as gender, social class, ethnicity or educational attainment (1999: 2, 6). Recent anthropological studies have employed such an intersectional approach and explored women’s mobility and public urban presence from various angles (cf. Dahlgren
- 17. Anke Reichenbach /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 3 2010, Deeb 2006, Deeb and Harb 2013, Kapchan 1996, Le Renard 2014, Newcomb 2009). In their rich ethnographies on Cairo, Fes, and Shi’ite South Beirut, Anouk de Koning (2009), Rachel Newcomb (2006), and Lara Deeb and Mona Harb (2013) have shown how gender, class, and religious identities influenced women’s mobility and leisure options in the city. The authors observed that young men and women increasingly frequented the same public spaces whose male, female or mixed character fluctuated over the course of the day or week. The time and manner in which young women were supposed to use certain places without risking their reputation were subject to constant negotiations and contestations, as much as the norms governing interactions between unrelated men and women. These findings concur with my interviewees’ perceptions and my own observations in Dubai. Most public spaces are not permanently gendered as male, and the construction of a place as appropriate and safe for young women depends on additional factors such as its “classy” character and its conformity with Islamic moral values. In the context of Dubai’s demographic situation, one aspect is considered as particularly crucial: the construction of public spaces as “Emirati” or as dominated by foreign nationals. This discursive distinction constitutes the most relevant element of women’s mental maps of the city. 3. Women’s geographies of Dubai 3.1. Between privilege and restrictions Since the 1990s, oil-poor Dubai has embarked upon major economic diversification programs intended to position the city “in the upper echelon of international markets including tourism, real estate, business hospitality and learning centers” (Lee & Jain 2009: 234). Dubai’s rulers have vastly improved local infrastructure and business conditions, and they have used the symbolic power of spectacular projects to captivate global audiences. With the construction of New Dubai in the western part of the city, Dubai’s government and business elites have created exclusive residential and leisure districts and privatized spaces of consumption such as luxurious shopping malls. Dubai’s old urban core around the creek has become a very distant periphery to these more recent projects which can only be reached by car on multi-lane highways. Dubai’s population has become as fragmented as the city’s physical layout. Only 10 percent of the city’s residents are Emirati nationals who constitute the “ruling ethnie” (Longva 2005: 121) and enjoy numerous privileges that the government grants them in exchange for political loyalty. Part of this “ruling bargain” (cf. Davidson 2008, Kanna 2011) is the entitlement of national citizens to act as sponsors/employers for foreign guest workers. All foreigners living in Dubai need such a sponsor to legally reside in the country. The sponsorship system grants Emirati citizens considerable power over their foreign employees – a power that often intimidates foreigners in their interactions with all Emiratis (cf. Bristol-Rhys 2012: 68). Among the foreign residents of Dubai, a complex status hierarchy exists that is mainly based on nationality and class. While Dubai is courting wealthy Euro-American expatriates and investors, the large majority of middle and working class migrants from the global South experience varying degrees of discrimination, exploitation and exclusion. Anthropologist Ahmed Kanna has highlighted this imperial legacy of Dubai’s urbanism that creates “zones of cultural and consumer comfort and well-being” for Western expats (Kanna 2013: 615) while installing regimes of surveillance and racial management for non- Western Others. Emirati women’s ability to navigate Dubai’s cityscape is influenced by such hierarchies of nationality and class and by notions of female propriety in their own Emirati community. Women’s public presence in the city is thus marked by both privilege and restrictions. As Emirati nationals, they can access the various
- 18. Anke Reichenbach /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 4 social worlds of Dubai with relative ease. In addition, their usually comfortable financial situation allows them to consume a wide range of leisure and entertainment places, including the upmarket playscapes of corporate New Dubai. Emirati ideals of proper womanhood, however, impose various constraints on their mobility and public presence. In order to maintain respectability and thus protect their own and their families’ reputation, the young women need to adhere to gendered social norms governing their public appearance and behavior. These include a reserved and modest demeanor, the avoidance of interactions with unrelated men, and appropriate dress. In a gender-mixed public, Emirati women usually wear abaya and shaila, a loose, full-length black over-garment and a black headscarf. Both are considered to be women’s “national dress” and ensure not only that women’s bodies are decently covered, but also that their wearers are instantly recognizable as Emirati nationals. Women should also have a legitimate reason to go out; simply “loitering” in public is regarded as improper. Women should not go out at a late hour, and they usually need trusted and reliable company, such as relatives, close friends, or even a housemaid as chaperone. The private car is considered the only truly appropriate means of transportation for women, often with darkly tinted windows to guarantee a maximum of privacy and protection from unwanted gazes. Public transportation, including taxis, are regarded as “cheap” and unsafe, and most Emiratis consider even Dubai’s modern metro as not appropriate for Emirati women since it is associated with foreign guest-workers who cannot afford their own car. These restrictions serve to discipline women’s appearance and conduct in public space, and thus to maintain women’s respectability. Simultaneously, the visible markers of proper Emirati womanhood such as shaila and abaya also signal women’s privileged nationality to foreigners, thus eliciting deference and bestowing an aura of inviolability on Emirati women. The power associated with their Emirati citizenship usually protects them from any form of harassment in interactions with foreign residents of the city (cf. Longva 1997). The crucial distinction between “us” and “them” is reflected in Emirati women’s discourses about the city. They divide Dubai into “Emirati” or “local” places on the one hand, and “non-Emirati” or “foreign” places on the other, with further sub-divisions such as “Indian”, “Filipino” or “English”. Such labels are fluid and relative: they fluctuate over the course of a day or week or with the changing popularity of a venue. The definition of a place as “Emirati” is thus not tied to the locality as such, but to the visible presence of other Emiratis which results in a sense of being “among one’s own people.” 3.2. “Non-Emirati” places Against the backdrop of Dubai’s demographic situation, young Emirati women consider most public places in the city as “non-Emirati”. These foreign-dominated places include Dubai’s markets and residential areas in the old heart of the city, which today are mainly frequented by middle and working class migrants from the global South. Young Emirati women visit these places occasionally, but they do not find them attractive. In their eyes, these neighborhoods are crowded, dirty, and dangerous; their narrow alleys are difficult to navigate by car, and the young women find the large numbers of male residents and visitors intimidating. For Fatma, one of my interviewees, those districts were “not just low class, but no class.” At the other end of the city, both geographically and in terms of its social hierarchies, Emirati women locate the upmarket “English” territories dominated by tourists and wealthy Euro-American expatriates. Some of the leisure establishments in these parts of the city contradict Islamic norms, and are therefore considered taboo for Emirati women, such as the numerous bars and nightclubs that serve alcohol. Some women still frequent these establishments and enjoy their “forbidden pleasures”, hoping that they will not run into any of their compatriots.
- 19. Anke Reichenbach /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 5 Western places that are more acceptable from a religious point of view, enjoy a wider popularity among young Emirati women, such as art galleries, flea markets, non-chain coffee shops, second-hand bookstores, or sports facilities. The young women often perceive such places as easy-going, permissive environments where they can relax from the strict gendered norms of their own Emirati environments. As clearly recognizable “outsiders”, however, they do not always feel entirely comfortable there. Emirati friends told me that they were often openly stared at or photographed without permission, usually by tourists who were thrilled to finally see an Emirati woman. Some Emiratis also felt that many expatriates resented their presence in Western places, as if they were, as Amira put it, “a problem to come”. While some Emiratis understand this unwelcoming attitude as postcolonial arrogance, others assume that foreigners are simply afraid of unintentionally upsetting one of the supposedly all-powerful nationals and having to face harsh consequences. Irrespective of the reasons, the occasionally annoyed reactions of expatriates in “white” places make Emirati women sometimes feel “out of place” and not particularly welcome. 3.3. “Emirati” places In contrast to Dubai’s numerous non-Emirati territories, young Emirati women’s geographies of the city contain only few places labeled as “Emirati”. Those include the luxurious Dubai Mall, especially on weekends, a handful of smaller, elegant malls along the coast or near Emirati residential areas further inland, and the newly opened entertainment and shopping districts Citywalk and Box Park. All “Emirati” places share a number of characteristics: They are perceived as orderly, clean, safe and morally impeccable; they are associated with an exclusive global culture of consumption, and they are privately owned, with security staff, surveillance cameras and “courtesy policies” that discipline visitors’ behavior and dress. Similar to the coffee shops explored by Lara Deeb and Mona Harb (2013) in Beirut, they thus “blur the borderline between public and private spheres by domesticating public space” (2013: 27). Most young Emirati women spend much of their leisure time in these places, mainly in the malls. There they socialize with female friends, go to the movies, visit coffee shops and restaurants, stroll, or go shopping. For them, malls are convenient and respectable places that considerably expand their access to public urban space (cf. Abaza 2001, Akçaoǧlu 2009, Le Renard 2015). As Najma explained, women’s families assume that malls provide a protective environment for their daughters, sisters, or wives: “Our parents think that malls are safe. […] With the malls, it’s the idea that they know where you are, and that you are locatable. And that they know everyone, especially from the Emirati society which is very small, and they all know each other. Which means that someone is going to be there who knows you, in a way. So, it’s so much safer.” As Najma’s quote highlights, malls and other Emirati places are, on the one hand, places where the young women can feel “at home”, but on the other hand, they are also the public arenas where young women’s conduct and appearance are most closely monitored and judged by their own compatriots. Through displays of socially desirable feminine behavior and decent but elegant dress, accessories, perfume and make-up, young women have to uphold the good reputation and status of their families. Under the scrutinizing gazes of other Emiratis who “love to judge and gossip,” young women need to demonstrate time and again that they are “respectable young ladies” who obey the rules of their society, as Firiyal, one of my friends, put it. In Emirati places, the boundaries between men and women are more strictly policed than in other environments, and even the most adventurous of my interviewees told me they would not dare to enter a place that was full of Emirati men, fearing harassment and gossip. Thus, “Emirati” places
- 20. Anke Reichenbach /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 6 constitute rather ambivalent environments for young national women: The places where they are among their own compatriots also harbor the greatest risks for their reputations. But even this intense social control cannot prevent young Emiratis from transgressing moral boundaries. Many young women find the gender-mixed character of malls and other “Emirati” places tantalizing, since only this kind of leisure environment offers the chance to playfully interact and flirt with Emirati men. Fatma explained: “We cannot have such interactions with men anywhere else. We have family gatherings, we have male cousins, but we cannot just chitchat with them. It’s not good, it’s not decent. […] The eyes of the family are always on us, on the girls. You shouldn’t do anything, you should be good, an angel, and you shouldn’t be naughty, you know. It’s nice to have a different kind of interaction sometimes.” Since this “different kind of interaction” between unrelated men and women is socially frowned upon, however, it cannot take place in settings such as coffee shops or restaurants where accidental observers could easily take notice. Instead, such clandestine interactions occur in the transit and passage zones of “Emirati” territories, in interstices and on back-stages, where people keep on moving and encounters are fleeting. While circulating through the malls’ passages, on their way through the malls’ car parks, or while driving at night along well-known “flirt roads” such as Jumeirah Beach Road, Emirati men and women exchange glances and smiles. They engage in playful banter and mutual teasing; young men approach women with small gifts such as CDs with love songs, roses, or chocolates and attempt to persuade them to accept their telephone numbers. Men and women pursue each other in their cars and interact from vehicle to vehicle through half-open windows. In such encounters, young Emiratis defy social norms and subvert the hierarchies of gender and generation (cf. Wynn 1997). However, even during such fleeting encounters women need to protect their reputation by remaining anonymous, e.g. by exchanging mobile numbers that are not registered in their names, or by remaining half-hidden behind tinted car windows. “Nothing can bring shame on men,” a popular proverb states. Young Emirati women’s reputations, however, are much more vulnerable, particular in those public places where the women ostensibly belong. 4. Conclusion Amira, the young woman quoted at the beginning, had emphasized her sense of being under constant scrutiny in the public spaces of Dubai. As this paper has shown, other Emirati women share her sentiments of being exposed to different kinds of judgement by various audiences in the city. While the places categorized as “non-Emirati” appear to offer a respite from the gendered constraints prevalent in Emirati environments, they are often also perceived as unwelcoming to Emirati nationals. “Emirati” places on the other hand are viewed as safe, respectable and morally impeccable, but there, women experience the most intense pressure to adhere to strict gendered norms. Hence, they harbor the greatest risks for a woman’s reputation and social prospects. Yet, the assumption cherished by many families that “Emirati” places offer no room for transgressions underestimates young women’s (and men’s) creativity and ingenuity in subverting mechanisms of social control and appropriating public spaces for their own agendas. It is the passages and transit zones of Emirati territories and thus mobility itself that enables young Emiratis to resist scrutiny. But even in such fleeting encounters, young women bear the greater risks since it is their compatriots’ moral judgement that, in the words of Najma, “can literally define your future.” Acknowledgements I wish to thank Carla Bethmann for inspiring discussions and her insightful and critical comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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- 23. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 9 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Gender and Use of Social Power: A Study on the Perception of Private Sector Employees in Turkey Asena Altın Gülovaa , Deniz Dirikb* , İnan Eryılmazc ab Celal Bayar University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Turkey c Celal Bayar University, Institute of Social Sciences, Turkey Abstract This study addresses the variable of ‘‘biological sex’’ from the perspectives of social power and gender theories. In the related research, power sources (namely referent, expert, legitimate, reward, and coercive) perceived by Turkish private sector employees (n=164) were investigated on the basis of gender. The findings of the research demonstrate that legitimate, expert, reward and referent power of female managers are perceived more strongly in comparison to male managers. In terms of perception of coercive power, no significant difference related with gender was observed. Interestingly, use of multifactorial analysis of variance (MANOVA) in perception of power sources revealed no interaction between the gender of the employee and the manager except for the coercive power. Overall, the findings point to the effects of gender on the perception of power © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Gender; power sources; managers; employees; turkey * Corresponding Author. Tel: +90-541-379-4129. E-mail address: deniz.ispirli@cbu.edu.tr.
- 24. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 10 1. Introduction This study addresses the variable of ‘‘biological sex’’ from the perspectives of social power and gender theories. The study first establishes a theoretical framework regarding the concepts of gender and social power. The explanations accounting for behavioral differences or gender-based inequalities between men and women could be based on opposing views. To exemplify, the functional approach seeks to display that gender differences contribute to social stability and integration, whereas the liberal feminist approach wages war on the sexism that targets women in workplace, educational institutions and media (Giddens, 2008: 505-511). On the other hand, the concept of social power is a key notion in social sciences. Given that power is a relational concept, it helps accounting for differences between the two sexes in terms of gender. Perceived power is affected by the expected sex roles and stereotypes, and the expectation is that male sex roles are associated with more exercise of power whereas female sex roles include more affection and less use of power (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990). This, in turn is expected to influence and even distort the perceptions of managerial power exercised by male and female managers. The stereotypical line of thinking that female managers are perceived as exercising less power (compared to a male manager under the same circumstances) would steal away from that female manager’s influence, prospects and future mobility towards higher ranks. In that context, power becomes not only relational but also perceptual in terms of being susceptible to the influence of sex stereotypes and expectations. Second, the study tests a number of hypotheses constructed on the question of employees’ perception regarding gender and the use of power. Specifically, the empirical part of the study problematizes whether power sources used by managers are perceived differently based on the genders of managers and employees. Given the social-cultural context of Turkey as a high power distance, collectivistic, and feminine country (Hofstede, 1980), and the fact that as of 2014, Turkey ranks 125th among a total of 142 countries in Global Gender Gap Index published annually by the World Economic Forum since 2006, it is imminent that the concepts of gender and power are addressed together. 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1. Gender and Use of Power 2.1.1. Gender Sex has been a frequent field of analysis for a variety of disciplines, because there is no other category within society to encompass such great number of people (Dökmen, 2006: 22). The term gender is related with cultural and societal differences between men and women while the term sex on the contrary is generally used to denote the anatomical and physiological differences (Giddens, 2008:505). Whereas sex is a demographic category, the term gender refers to societal attributes and expectations resulting from being a man or a woman, as well as psychosocial characteristics that classify an individual either as a man or a woman. According to Alvesson (1998) our identities are strictly dependent on gender. The theories concerning behavior related with gender such as evolution of gender roles, emergence of differences or use of gender stereotypes are categorized mainly under three headings; 1) biological theories based on brain and hormones such as psychoanalytical theory and evolutionary psychology-sociobiological theory influenced by Darwin, 2) cognitive theories such as cognitive development theory and gender diagram theory, 3) theories emphasizing social influence and interactions such as social roles theory (See Dökmen,
- 25. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 11 2006). Biological theories suggest that differences between men and women come naturally by birth whereas social theories claim they are acquired characteristics that evolve after birth and are subject to change. In sociobiological theory, under explicit influence of Darwin, the adoption of different skills by modern man in comparison to woman is designated as an evolutionary consequence of his centuries old hunter-gatherer inheritance. However social theories focus more on social powers such as norms, stereotypes and gender roles. Within the framework of those theories, gender differences in management and powers attributed respectively to man and woman are the results of learned/acquired gender roles (Pines & Baruch, 2008). Gender stereotypes are a summary of our comprehension about certain groups. They provide us with heuristical mental shortcuts and information about these groups. That, in turn enables us to pre-adjust our expectations and attitudes towards a member of these groups in case of an encounter and help us define the ‘‘reality’’ (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1999:124). Gender stereotypes emerge from a social perception of differences between men and women; is consolidated through division of labor based on gender, and affects the way men and women think, behave and feel. To exemplify, men are defined as independent, rational, competitive, winners, strong, active and emotionally stable, whereas women are taken to be weaker in terms of those qualities (Dawley et. al, 2004). On the other hand, people tend to associate power with leadership and thus uphold men as powerful leaders. (Temel et. al, 2006:36). The persistence of male sexism or gender stereotypes is posited to be the reason behind low-rating of women in evaluations particularly by men. (Elias & Cropanzano, 2006: 121). Division of labor based on gender stands out as the exceptional circumstance in which to display and follow up gender differences. All in all, it would be a mistake to reckon gender inequality as an only “women’s problem” instead of addressing it as a product of power discrepancies between men and women. For Dökmen (2006) one prominent feature of gender stereotypes is the fact that gender differences are based on huge social power discrepancies. Power is a relational concept (Koçel, 2003:565) and the most important facet of the relationship between managers and subordinates as an extent of organizational life (Ward, 1998:364). 2.1.2. Power and Power Sources According to Hodgkinson (2008: 26) management is an art of exercising power. Power is defined as the key factor of managerial performance (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990), the fulcrum of management functions and the manifesto of an asymmetry in a two-person relationship (Rajan & Krishnan, 2002). In a broader sense, power is a concept that incorporates authority, centralization, decision-making rights and participation, influencing and politics. Power might arise from any culture, source, knowledge or pressure (Yaylacı, 2006: 36). French and Raven ‘s (1959) model comprising of five power sources including legitimate power, reward power, coercive power, expert power and referent power is widely acclaimed as a prominent model of social power in organizational studies (Raven, 1993). These power sources might be formulated as follows (Bağcı, 2009: 25- 26): Referent/Charismatic power stems from subordinates’ feeling of respect and admiration towards their superordinates. Referent power might serve as a significant tool in augmenting personal power and a charismatic leader is frequently characterized by his subordinates as an unmistakable, honest, virtuous and wise person. Reward power stems from a subordinate’s perception that his superordinate will reward him in case he performs a desired attitude. Every system goes with its own formal reward and punishment factors (status, promotion, advancement, research fund, vacation, extra allowance, and etc.). Individuals practicing control function through those means are regarded competent in influencing others. Legitimate power depends on legitimization of authority. The acknowledgment of the existing social structure confers on some individuals the right to exercise legitimate power. The extent of an individual’s legitimate power is dependent on being
- 26. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 12 appointed to that power. Within organizations this power qualifies the manager for expecting conformity from employees. Power belongs not to the attendant but to the position. Expert power stems from the distinctive knowledge, capability and experience of a superordinate. Employees tend to think that rather than the legitimate, coercive or reward power that stems from appointment to a leadership position, expert power is more of a personal power featuring a higher degree of respect. People are more disposed to monitor and recognize the directives and suggestions of individuals who are authorities in a specific discipline. Finally, coercive power depends on a subordinate’s perception that the superordinate has the right to punish in case of noncompliance with the exercise of influence. Gender differences based on power prevail in accounting for gender differences in managerial echelons (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990). Traditional stereotypes are among the primary reasons why female managers face a lower degree of acceptance in comparison to their male fellows (Klenke, 2003; Dawley et. al, 2004). Traditional masculine traits are highly welcomed compared to their feminine counterparts and stereotypes illustrate men with power-loaded adjectives like aggressiveness, ambition to progress, headstrong posture, athletic and competitive manners, dominant and oppressive attitude, self-confidence, independent and attitude- defining character whereas women are associated with warmth, intimacy and compassion (Sargut, 1994:113- 115; Rigg & Sparrow, 1994; Dawley et.al, 2004). Such gender role differences might lead to different social behavior within the occupational life in the social values pattern (Okurame, 2007). As a result, the qualities associated with managerial success become synonymous with the social roles attributed to men. ‘‘Women in management’’ studies demonstrate that women place more value on interpersonal relationships and depend on legitimacy in experiencing power whereas men focus on power largely to maximize personal benefits. Women are perceived positively as long as they adopt a collaborative, sharing and participative leadership style and are stigmatized and rated negatively as aggressive, dominant and male-like leaders in case they adopt masculine leadership styles (Klenke, 2003). Historically leadership has been a trait ascribed principally to men rather than women and these prejudgments are among the primary reasons for negative perceptions towards female leaders (Dawley et. al, 2004). There is a deep-rooted belief that managerial positions belong ‘‘only to men’’ or ‘‘just men are fully equipped’’ for the task. The need to traditionally regard women as unqualified for male ranks, which is an indication of the endeavor on men’s part to keep their advantage in the workplace, might find its roots in sexism and power issues (Schein, 2007). 3. A Study on Private Sector Employees’ Perception of Power based on Gender 3.1 Research Hypotheses The findings of gender-based studies about organizational use of power are quite mixed. A study conducted by Korabik et.al. (1993) which is based on managers’ and subordinates ‘evaluations of supervisor conflict management and leadership styles revealed that although there were no significant gender differences regarding the conflict management and leadership styles used by managers, subordinates evaluated male and female supervisors differently. Ragins and Sundstrom (1990), in their study on 110 managers, demonstrated that expert power comes into more prominence with female managers in comparison to their male colleagues. In another study women are stated to be disadvantageous in use of social power as compared to men. It is alleged that women are taken to be ‘‘punishers’’ when they resort to coercive power sources and lose effectiveness whereas with men it is vice versa (Carli, 1999). Johnson (1976) found that legitimate, expert and coercive power exercised by men is perceived much more than that by women whereas with referent and reward power bases there is no discernable difference (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1990). Elias’s study (2004) reveals that male subordinates particularly grade their female managers lower as regards the coercive power. A study conducted
- 27. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 13 by Moshavi et.al (2008) demonstrates that expert power of male managers is perceived to be higher whereas with female managers legitimate power takes the lead. As a result of our relevant literature review, we might say that the research is largely inconclusive. Hence the research hypotheses are constructed on the “gender variable’’ concerning the power sources as perceived by employees. Hypotheses; H1: Perceived referent power varies according to the gender of the manager. H2: Perceived referent power varies according to the gender of the employees and the manager. H3: Perceived expert power varies according to the gender of the manager. H4: Perceived expert power varies according to the gender of the employees and the manager. H5: Perceived legitimate power varies according to the gender of the manager. H6: Perceived legitimate power varies according to the gender of the employees and the manager. H7: Perceived reward power varies according to the gender of the manager. H8: Perceived reward power varies according to the gender of the employees and the manager. H9: Perceived coercive power varies according to the gender of the manager. H10: Perceived coercive power varies according to the gender of the employees and the manager. 3.2. Method The research was carried out on employees and their managers working in various industries in Manisa and İzmir provinces via convenience sampling method. Survey method was used for data collection purpose. The questionnaire consisted of demographic questions and Rahim Leader Power Inventory (RLPI). Dependent variables are power sources used by managers as perceived by the employees; independent variables are gender of the employees (the respondents) and the managers. The 29-item scale created by Rahim (1988) to measure the five power sources (coercive, legitimate, expert, referent, reward) as put forward by French and Raven (1959) was subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis on Amos 22. The results of the factor analysis confirmed the original construct with some modifications and the five-factor structure was preserved (c2=776,109 df=289, c2/df=2,68; RMSEA=0,080; TLI=0,90; CFI=0,90, GFI=0,90). Reliability tests resulted in the following Cronbach’s alphas for the overall construct and respective factorial constructs: overall construct (0,90), legitimate power (0,63), coercive power (0,79), reward power (0,78), expert power (0,89) and referent power (0,76). Three items related with legitimate power, two items related with reward power, two items related with referent power, one item related with coercive power and one item related with expert power were eliminated from the scale in order to raise the model fit and coefficient reliability for the respective factorial construct and the overall construct. 3.3. Empirical Evidence 3.3.1. Descriptive Statistics Exactly half of the respondents’ (n=164) are women (n=82) and the other half are men (n=82); 54,3% are between the ages of 26-35; and 61,6% are university graduates. Work experience at the current workplace is 1-5 years for 48,8% of the respondents; total years worked with the current manager is 1-5 years for 53,7% of the respondents; and finally, total work experience is 1-5 years for 34,8% and 6-10 years for 36,6% of the respondents (See Table 1). Managers are mostly men (71,3%) and the respondents report being indifferent (52,4%) as regards to the preferred gender of their superior.
- 28. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 14 Table 1. Demographics F P (%) gender female 82 50% male 82 50 age 18-25 24 14,6% 26-35 89 54,3 36-45 42 25,6 +46 9 5,5 education primary school 10 6,1% high school 29 17,7 vocational high school 24 14,6 university 101 61,6 experience at this work(years) less than a year 39 23,8% 1-5 80 48,8 6-10 32 19,5 11-15 6 3,7 +16 7 4,3 experience with this manager less than a year 55 33,5% 1-5 years 88 53,7 6-10 17 10,4 11-15 2 1,2 +16 2 1,2 total work experience less than a year 19 11,6% 1-5 years 57 34,8 6-10 60 36,6 11-15 13 7,9 +16 15 9,1 prefer my manager to be woman 15 9,1% man 63 38,4 I am indifferent 86 52,4 Table 2. The Number of Male and Female Subordinates and Managers Gender of manager Totalwoman man Subordinate Gender woman 32 50 82 man 15 67 82 total 47 117 164 In total, there are 32 female subordinates with female managers; 50 female subordinates with male managers; 15 male subordinates with female managers, and 67 male subordinates with male managers (Table 2).
- 29. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 15 3.3.2. Hypothesis Tests and Empirical Evidence Correlations among power subscales and combined perceived power are listed in Table 3. Correlations among power subscales point to an interdependence of all five power bases which means a high level of any one of those power sources is closely associated with the others. Table 3. Means, Standard Deviations, Alphas and Intercorrelations among Power Subscales Subscale Mean SD I II III IV V VI I. Reward 3,15 ,81 (0,78) II. Legitimate 3,57 ,77 ,55** (0,63) III. Coercive 3,03 ,96 ,25** ,26** (0,79) IV. Referent 3,15 1,07 ,70** ,53** ,10 (0,76) V. Expert 3,46 ,95 ,64** ,56** ,09 ,71** (0,89) VI. Total perceived power 3,27 ,68 ,85** ,73** ,46** ,81** ,83** (0,90) Gender ,24** ,16* ,96 -04 -,03 ,10 Gender of the manager -,15* -,20* ,04 -,30** -33** -,25** ** p< 0.01 *p< 0.05 Table 4 displays the results of t-tests. According to the empirical evidence, there is no significant difference in terms of employees’ perception with regard to coercive power used by male and female managers. However, perception of legitimate, reward, expert and referent powers varies according to the gender of the manager. The employees ‘perception of female managers’ legitimate power (mean=3, 8227), reward power (mean=3, 3574), expert power (mean=3, 9660) and referent power (mean=3, 6738) is significantly higher than that of male managers (mean=3, 4815; 3, 0803; 3, 2684; 2, 9487 respectively) (p<0, 05). In this case, H1, H3, H5, and H7 are accepted. H9 is rejected. Table 4. Mean and Standard Deviation for Employees’ Perception of Power Sources based on the Gender of the Managers (t-test) n=164 Female Manager (47) Male Manager (117) Power Sources MEAN SD MEAN SD t p Legitimate 3,8227 0,52406 3,4815 0,83556 2,599 0,010 Coercive 2, 9681 1,21875 3,0641 0,83894 -,578 0,564 Reward 3,3574 0,74476 3,0803 0,83503 1,980 0,049 Expert 3,9660 0,73226 3,2684 0,96173 4,476 0,000 Referent 3,6738 0,98659 2,9487 1,03632 4,106 0,000 p<0,05 In Table 5 is the comparison of the means appertaining to perception of power sources based on the gender of both employees and managers. The evidence from multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) demonstrates just one statistically significant difference (with regard to coercive power) in perception of power sources based on the combined effect of gender of employees and managers (p>0, 05). In other words, there is no difference in perception of power sources for male and female employees based on their managers’ gender
- 30. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 16 except for the coercive power. Under the circumstances, H2, H4, H6, and H8 are rejected whereas H10 is confirmed. Table 5. Multiple Comparison (MANOVA) of the Means regarding Perception of Power Sources Based on Employees’ and Managers’ Gender and Standard Deviation (SD) Female Manager Male Manager n=164 Female Employees Male Employees Female Employees Male Employees Power Sources MEAN SD MEAN SD MEAN SD MEAN SD p Legitimate 3,7500 0,5219 3,9778 0,5112 3,2667 0,8934 3,6418 0,7572 0,58 Coercive 2,7266 1,2351 3,4833 1,0414 3,0850 0,8308 3,0485 0,8508 0,02 Reward 3,3062 0,7343 3,4667 0,7807 2,7440 0,8806 3,3313 0,7071 0,13 Expert 3,9813 0,7297 3,9333 0,7297 3,1960 1,0973 3,3224 0,8513 0,59 Referent 3,6667 0,9313 3,6889 1,1305 2,9133 1,1641 2,9751 0,9380 0,91 p<0, 05, manager’s gender*employee’s gender F (2,723), Wilks Lambda: 0,92 4. Conclusion In this study differences between employees’ perception regarding use of power by female and male managers have been detected. Female managers are perceived to be using more legitimate, reward, expert and referent power. On the other hand, no interaction is discerned between employees’ and managers’ gender according to multiple comparison outcomes except for the coercive power. Some of these empirical evidence correlate with some evidence in the existing literature (Elias 2004; Johnson, 1976; Carli, 1999). Yet, generally speaking, the findings of the study are contrary to the initial assumptions on which the research hypotheses were based in that we would expect a lower perception of use of power by female managers and we would also expect to find that female managers would be perceived as using more of expert and reward power and male managers would be perceived as using more referent and coercive power, based on the evidence from the literature. We would also expect to find perception of higher levels of use of power by male managers. Evidence more feasible for generalization will become available if this study is repeated by future researchers using different samples from various sectors in different places. This study contributes to the literature in our country by drawing attention to the significance of studies handling organizational use of power and power sources from a gender perspective. As stated by Varoğlu (2001:323), gender roles are one of those aspects of organizational life that has long been neglected but is increasingly gaining in popularity. In addition, the increasing interaction between men and women in public sphere contributes to the transformation of male gender roles. References Alvesson, M. (1998). Gender relations and identity at work: a case study of masculinities and femininities in an advertising agency. Human Relations, 51, 8, 969-1005. Bağcı, Z. (2009). A research on the effect of employees’ perceived power sources within organizations on their organizational commitment. İzmir Dokuz Eylül University, Unpublished PhD. Thesis.
- 31. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 17 Carli, L. L. (1999). Gender, interpersonal power, and social influence. Journal of Social Issues, 55, 1, 81- 99. Dawley, D., Hoffman, J.J., & Smith, A.R. (2004). Leader succession: Does gender matter? The Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 25, 8, 678-690. Dökmen, Z. Y. (2006). Toplumsal cinsiyet: sosyal-psikolojik açıklamalar. İstanbul: Sistem Yayınları. Elias, S. M., & Cropanzano, R. (2006). Gender discrimination may be worse than you think: Testing ordinal interactions in power research. The Journal of General Psychology, 133, 2, 177-130 Giddens, A. (2008). Sosyoloji. İstanbul: Kırmızı Yayınları. Hodgkinson, C. (2008). Values and motivation in organizational life. İ. Anıl, & B. Doğan (Eds.). İstanbul: Beta Yayıncılık. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kağıtçıbaşı, Ç. (1999). Yeni insan ve insanlar. (10th ed.). İstanbul: Evrim Yayınları. Klenke, K. (2003). Gender influences in decision-making processes in top managament teams. Management Decision, 41, 10, 1024-1034. Koçel, T. (2003). Business management. İstanbul: Beta Yayıncılık. Korabik, K., Baril, G.L., & Watson, C. (1993). Managers' conflict management style and leadership effectiveness: The moderating effects of gender. Sex Roles, 29, 5, 405-420. KSGM (Directorate General on Status of Women) Handbook of Gender (Unpublished document). Moshavi, D., Dana, S., Standifird, S.S., & Pons, F. (2008). Gender effects in the business school classroom: A social power perspective. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 10, 1, 3‐17. Okurame, D. (2007). Perceived mentoring functions: Does mentor’s gender matter? Women in Management Review, 22, 5, 418-427. Pines, M.A., & Baruch, O.K. (2008). The role of culture and gender in the choice of a career in management. Career Devolopment International, 13, 4, 306-319. Ragins, B. R., & Sundstrom, E. (1990). Gender and perceived power in manager- subordinate relations. The Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63, 273-287. Rahim. M.A. (1988). The development of a leader power inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 23, 491-503. Rajan, S., & Krishnan, V.R. (2002). Impact of gender on influence, power and authoritarianism. Women in Management Review, 17, 5, 197-206.
- 32. Asena Altın Gülova,Deniz Dirik, İnan Eryılmaz / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 18 Raven, B. H. (1993). The bases of power: Origins and recent developments. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 227-251. Rigg, C., & Sparrow, J. (1994). Gender, diversity and working styles. Women in Management Review, 9, 1, 9-16. Sargut, S. (1994). Kültürler arası farklılaşma ve yönetim. Ankara: V Yayınları. Schein, V. E. (2007). Women in management: Reflections and projections. Women in Management Review, 22, 1, 6-18. Temel, A., M. Yakın, & S.Misci (2006). Reflection of organizational gender on organizational behavior. Management and Economy, 13, 1. Varoğlu, D. (2001). Gender roles in organizational life. In S. Güney (Ed.), Management and Organization. Ankara: Nobel Publishing and Distribution, Ankara. Ward, E. A. (1998). Managerial power bases and subordinates’s manifest needs as influences on psychological climate. Journal of Business and Psychology, 12, 3, 361-378. Yaylacı, H.E. (2006). The effect of power and authority relations on accounting information decisions. Ankara University Unpublished PhD. Thesis.
- 33. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 19 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies How to Encounter the Historical Omission of Women in the Process of Acquisition of Documents Women-Centered Archives Aslı Davaz* Co-founder of the Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation, Turkey Abstract A new subject has entered women studies in Turkey: Women-centered archives and their historical process. The acquisition of women’s and women's organization’s archives/papers/records and their preservation in an archive center is a new field of interest in Turkey. In order to understand the history of these collections in various countries, we must not forget that the decisive factor of the existence of these collections is the feminist movement. As so many fields have been closed to women for a long time, women and the women's movement have established and developed their own institutions. In the early 20th century, the documents generated by the women's movement were preserved in newly founded archives centers. These collections were documents issued by the women's movement either during their struggle, their mass actions or activities. Usually these archives centers were founded by feminist pioneers through the donation of their own private papers. These centers still represent an answer to the exclusion/omission of women in the archival field and they represent the memory of women and women's movements; they also create an awareness regarding the "invisibility" of women in history. A century ago in parallel with the struggle of women for freedom and equality a new consciousness began to blossom: Women and the women's movement realized that if they wanted to transmit to future generations, documents and archives, they had to solve the acquisition and preservation process themselves. Here at this point, women started to set up archive centers which grow in parallel with the development of the women’s consciousness. In this paper, I will try to explain the establishment process of women’s archives, the problems they had to face, the reasons of the loss of memory/documents and the work done in order to solve them. I will try to also assess the level of development of this new field in Turkey. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women-centered archives; women’s history; women’s records; women’s private archives. Corresponding Author: Tel: +90 532 233 99 40 E-mail address: adavaz@otoanaliz.net
- 34. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 20 1. Introduction Women-centered archives were not established simply because general archival repositories had failed them. They were and continue to be symbols of feminist power and resistance to patriarchal values. Gabrielle Lili Earnshaw I would like to congratulate the Gender Studies Department of Middle East Technical University on the occasion of its 20th anniversary and thank all the women for such a well-organized symposium. In this paper entitled How to Encounter the Historical Omission of Women in The Process of Acquisition of Documents Women-Centered Archives, I would like to present the top representative women’s archives some major topic of discussion in the movement of women-centered archives and then try to assess the actual situation of this field in Turkey. In the period between the middle of the 19th century and the early days of the 20th , women all over the world, were still living in a cloistered world at different levels in their societies, and prevented from doing and participating in the full range of activities permitted to men. Although some women from time to time, rebelled against these barriers, and succeeded in breaking through them, they remained individual isolated cases. In the early 20th century the struggle to bring down the heavy walls of this restricted domain gradually became somewhat more of a mass movement, set in motion by pioneering women, groups and organizations. At the same time as this process of organized struggle was beginning, a wealth of documents, both written and visual, such as publications, posters, diaries, photos, letters, correspondence, and reminiscence relating to the fight for women’s right, also started to accumulate in the possession of these pioneering women groups and organisations. Parallel to this struggle for freedom and equality a new awareness began to blossom that there was a need for women themselves to look after, acquire and preserve the documents and archives about the lives and struggles of women in the past, generated by women and the women’s movement, to serve as witness for future generations. This is precisely how we began the process of collecting and preserving documents pertaining to women and establishing related archives. Such archives were established in three main periods: the suffrage movement of the first quarter of the 20th century, the women’s movement of the 60’s and 70’s, and the 80’s and 90’s. These archives constitute the memory of women and women’s movement and their growth is parallel to the development of a feminist consciousness. 2. The memory problem The establishment of these libraries and archive centers were generally led by feminists. For example, Marguerite Durand (1864-1936) started to collect and preserve the documents of the women’s movement in 1897. Later in 1931, Durand donated thousands of documents she had collected to the Paris Municipality. Marie-Louise Bouglé (1883-1936), on the other hand, converted her own house into a library in 1926. Eliska Vincent (1841-1914) who is known as the first archivist of the feminist movement in France, willed all the documents she collected in her lifetime to the Social Museum of Paris. She had chosen Marguerite Durand and Maria Vérone (1874-1938) to fulfill the duty. Her collection consisted of documents of the feminist movement of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In her will, she wanted a feminist institute to be opened as a part of the museum. In 1916 a research department was started by the museum administration and yet the Vincent’s archive, holding almost 600,000 documents, was rejected in 1919, despite all the efforts exerted by Durand and Vérone. Thus this invaluable collection was dropped into the dustbin of history. Researchers in this field claim that the archive was either lost or exterminated.
- 35. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 21 A similar end awaited the documents collected by Marbel and Chulliat libraries. On the other hand, the collections belonging to Hélène Brion (1882-1962) and Gabrielle Duchêne (1870-1954) managed to be protected. The archive of Brion, who was tried by a military court because of her peace-promoting activities during WWI, is today at the French Social History Institute. The archives of Duchêne, who was the head of the French branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom are kept in the Nanterre International Contemporary Documentation Library of Paris Nanterre University, which specializes in the history of the 20th Century. The Fawcett Library (1926), the Marguerite Durand Library (1936), and the IAV (1935) -International Archives for the Women’s Movement- can be listed as the top representative trio of first-wave women- centered archives and libraries. The oldest of these three is the one established by the Women’s Suffrage Committee in 1866 and run by Millicent Garrett Fawcett for fifty years. The library, which has non- governmental status, was initiated by the donations of Fawcett - her whole private archive included - and the members of the Committee in 1926. The building-up process of the Marguerite Durand Library was a little different. At first it was opened as Durand’s private library, but gradually it started to serve more and more women. In 1931, when Durand donated her collection of books and documents, which was large enough for any library or archive, her only provision was that the Paris Municipality would institutionalize her library as an archival center The Municipality kept the promise and the same year the Durand Library was launched on one of the floors of their building. With the continuing support of the Paris Municipality, the Durand Library has been giving service for the last 77 years. Despite staff limitations and other difficulties, the library is still a landmark in the world-wide studies of this field. The IAV (International Archives for the Women’s Movement), on the other hand, was established by the Dutch feminists to enliven the women’s movement after the suffrage activities slowed down, and most important of all, to pass the recollections of the suffragist struggle onto the future generations. Today, almost all the women’s libraries and archive centers are supported by municipalities, universities, national libraries, and culture ministries. In spite of the institutional support they receive, they are generally independent in administrative respect. Their boards are composed of members of the women’s movement and women’s centers at universities, women historians, professional librarians and archivists. Due to the financial strain caused by shrinking spaces and budgets, these institutions which keep on being at the service of millions of women around the world, nowadays are in an almost compulsory digitalization process, mostly to ensure their future existence by economizing. In the 1910’s, at 400 out of the 4000 organizations registered in the German Women’s Associations Union, there was either one library or a reading room. The richness of the collections in these 400 small libraries was proof of the extraordinary organization of women at this period. However, after the 1920’s, with the impact of WWI, most of these archive centers and libraries were shut down and thus the valuable heritage of the women’s movement in them was lost forever. Even the ones rescued that day were destroyed afterwards with the rise of fascism. One or two of these collections, however, managed to survive. The most important one is the Helen Lange Archive, which has about 200,000 documents which went through a restoration process. This archive is perhaps the best evidence of the lost memory of the German women’s movement in 1914. Disaster caused by the war in Europe, Nazis who robbed the archives, migration, the indifference of the state towards women’s records, and most important of all, the financial restrictions were the main reasons for women losing their collective memory. Apart from all this, there is the censorship applied by the rest of the family to women’s archives when inherited. For example, the dairies of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lived in 18th century Istanbul for many years because of her husband’s work, suffered censorship by her relatives after her death. Are we sure that the memoirs and notebooks of the poet
- 36. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 22 Nigar Hanım kept in the Aşiyan Museum in İstanbul has reached us as a whole without being victimized by censorship? Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958) and Maud Wood Park (1871-1955) are the two major figures in women- centered archiving in the US. As a historian, suffragist and archivist, Beard, who was influenced by the well-known feminist of the time, Rosika Schwimmer (1877-1948), had extraordinary achievements between 1935 and 1940, while establishing the World Center for Women’s Archives. Taking part in the suffragist movement, Beard also did pioneering studies on history and women’s history. The archiving center she imagined was initiated with the mission of going beyond the borders of the US to reach out to the women of the world and to save all their documents. Apart from saving documents, this center aimed at bringing together women researchers overseas to lead the emergence of a new civilization by highlighting the creative and molding role of women in history. In the women-centered archives envisioned by Beard the primary goal was the constant circulation of these documents which had been in the dark for long among women who would regularly visit the center from all around the world. By focusing on social history, Beard criticized the dominant male perspective in the field of history that emphasized economy and politics only. In the university model she prescribed for women, she imagined “herstory” as a four-year undergraduate program. Beard was certainly a faithful follower of the well-known premise of the French historian Fustel de Coulanges, “No documents, no history!”. Beard was also fond of narrating a story which helps prove the vitality of women-centered archives and their insignificance for public institutions: 25 years after the private archive of the American suffragist movement leader, Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947), had been given to the New York Public Library, a researcher wanted to use some of its documents. However, she was appalled when she was told that there was no such archive in the collections. The truth was revealed only after her relentless efforts: The boxes had never been touched and the archive was left to decay for that 25-year period. According to Beard, the archivist in charge not only was unaware of the existence of such boxes in her department but had failed to acknowledge the archive at all. American historian Anne Firor Scott noted that the condition of such archives was not much better even at the largest library of the US, the Library of Congress, which informed historians only about the private archives of men whom they regularly promote. After making all the initial preparations for the World Center for Women’s Archives, Mary Beard wrote thousands of letters to almost all the rich people who might give financial support to the project, along with feminists and former suffragists. Almost everybody she was in correspondence with showed interest and thus she started to collect the private archives of women from all parts of society in the framework of an efficient campaign. During the course of this campaign, Amelia Earhart’s widowed husband donated all of the pilot’s documents. Although the psychological and financial support Beard marshalled gave signs of a successful project yet the economic troubles foreshadowing WWII, the never-resolved tension in the suffragist movement, together with several other dealings of the administrators of World Center for Women’s Archives, prevented the collection of the funds needed. Beard had to confront an astonishing remark that an archive focusing so intensely on women was outdated since women had already achieved the equality they had asked for in almost every field. Even among women there were those who were not ready for the idea of non-conventional libraries and despite the world-wide increase in women-centered archives, it was still an alien concept in the USA. Unfortunately, by 1941 it became clear that the realization of the project was not possible. The major part of the archives collected in the Beard campaign was given to the Schlesinger Library in the USA. Actually, the foundation of the remarkable collection of this library was laid by means of this donation. In 1942, at the age of 71, Maud Wood Park, who was a feminist activist like Beard, donated her private archive documenting her lifelong suffragist struggle to Radcliffe College.
- 37. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 23 A year later, the archive she donated was named the Women’s Rights Collection and continued to be enriched based on the same principles. However, it is to be noted that within this period, while accepting the moderate suffragist’s archives, they continued to refuse the documents of radical suffragist for a considerable time. Only after the reception of the archives of the National Women’s Party members did this wrong strategy come to an end, and so, in 1943, with the contributions of Mary Beard and Maud Wood Park, the entire collection was opened to public use. In 1935 three Dutch feminists, Johanna Naber (1859-1941), Rosa Manus (1881-1942), and Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot (1897-1989) founded the IAV (International Archives for the Women’s Movement), which was considered to be the first archival center of the women’s movement on an international scale. The internationalization of the suffragist movement, especially in the first quarter of the 20th century, has helped the center evolve into a globally acclaimed institution, collecting archives from all over the world. As a start, Rosa Manus donated Dutch suffragist Aletta Jacobs’ archive to the IAV. Manus, who became the first director, was diligent in the suffragist movement and also worked as a pacifist, while actively participating in the classification of the archives at the center. At the beginning, 90 percent of the donations belonged to the International Women’s Movement. Manus arranged the relations of the IAV with the Women’s Library in London, and the Marguerite Durand Library in Paris. However, the center’s brief existence came to an end on July 2nd, 1940, two months after Holland was invaded by the Nazi Army, which confiscated all the collections, books, furniture and even the curtains. It was not long before this sad incident that Rosa Manus had brought all the documents of her 30 year-long-collection to the building. The Germans claimed that the IAV was an international organization and should be closed. The “reason” of the robbery was that German women wanted these collections. Yet, at the end of the war, it was the Soviet Army who got hold of them to take to Moscow. For 63 years no proper information were obtained as to the fate of these documents. In 2003, after tedious and tiresome journey, the archives stolen by Nazis made their way back to Amsterdam. Although the attempt to open the World Center for Women’s Archives failed, the vision framed by Mary Beard was realized in different ways later. In each country women-centered archives were established. The archives of the pioneering feminist women were no longer scattered all over, or else totally forgotten. They were systematically collected, catalogued, stored on microfilm and thus presented to the researchers. 3. The future of women-centered archives There is a major topic of discussion in the movement of women-centered archive. The views on the subject have two quiet opposite trends. Although they ask the same questions “should women’s archive centers continue to exist?” Their answers are not the same, those who answers no, think that they have to be integrated in the national archival system because the fact of being separated from the system recreate an exclusion of women and that the final aim is to create a basis of an equal representation and documentation for women in the national archival system, on the other hand those who believe that separate women’s archive centers have many positive effects on redressing the under-representation of women, think that their mere existence serve to promote the study of women history. But today all trends converge more or less to share women’s records on-line and there is also a special effort done either inside general archive centers or in the women-centered archive to develop a new acquisition strategy to fill the none-documented subject of their collection. But they try not to fall in an easy acquisition target in collecting only heroine’s, pioneers and mainstream organization records. They try to enlarge the scope of their acquisition and
- 38. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 24 specially work with under-documented groups of women from “different occupations, political affiliations, sexual orientations, so with women from all belief, ethnicity and classes”. (Mason & Zanish-Belcher, 2013) While new collecting strategies and initiatives are developed, a close collaboration of scholars, archivists and activists should be established. In the future it is highly probable that alternative model of women’s records will appear. To give only one example: the Jewish Women’s Archive “is an alternative model of a virtual archive digitalized primary sources by or about Jewish women living the originals to their owners and this is an easily accessible body of primary sources”. (Moseley, 2013) If we have to assess the stage or level of development of the women’s archives movement in Turkey, we can easily say that we are at the very beginning of this historical process. Although individual efforts to preserve the private papers of women started long ago, a systematic preservation movement started only twenty five years ago with the foundation of the Women’s Library in Istanbul. The creation of this institution is a milestone in the field of collecting, cataloguing and disseminating women’s records. On a national level the archival field in Turkey met, I think, for the first time with the concept of women-centered archive at the Symposium of the Archival Problems organized by The History Foundation of Turkey in 1995 where I presented a paper on the history of women-centered archives. 20 years has passed over this symposium, other symposiums have been organized on this topic and to name only one The Problem of Sources in Women’s Memory organized by the Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation in 2009. In 1990, the Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation was established in Istanbul and up till now, one of its aims has been to collect women’s records in Turkey. The donation of private archives by women is rather a new concept in Turkey. Especially, donation of documents before passing away is quite rare. But novelist and playwright Adalet Ağaoğlu (1929) and worldwide celebrated archeologist Halet Çambel (1916-2014), who set an example, donated their archives during their lifetime to Boğaziçi University. Three thousand books that Ağaoğlu owned, along with her own archive, are now on the shelves of the Adalet Ağaoğlu Research Room at the university library. Halet Çambel donated not only her archives but also the Red Yali or Halet Çambel Mansion in Arnavutköy (Istanbul), where she had lived in for over half a century with her family. The university administration will open the Halet Çambel and Nail Çakırhan Archeology and Traditional Architecture Research Center in this historical structure after a proper restoration. Like Ağaoğlu and Çambel to name few writer Buket Uzuner, social activist and lawyer Canan Arın, former MP Gaye Erbatur, journalist Nevval Sevindi, political scientist and feminist activist Serpil Çakır, political scientist and feminist activist Şirin Tekeli have donated their private papers themselves to the Women’s Library. Most of the private archives of the pioneering women in the social struggle and intellectual life in Turkey are either not found yet or lost for good. In the preface of the biography she wrote about social activist Şükûfe Nihal (1896-1973), (Bir Cumhuriyet Kadını Şükûfe Nihal /A Republican Woman- Şükûfe Nihal) Hülya Argunşah says that none of the private documents of such a productive author, who was also extremely prominent in the social scene, have lasted to our day and thus gives a good example of the generation of “archiveless women.” Likewise, only three letters are left behind by Suat Derviş (1903-1972), a well-known and prolific writer who took part in all levels of the social struggle. The documents of Halide Edip (1884-1964), Fatma Aliye (1862-1936), Poet Nigar Hanım (1856-1918), and Emine Semiye (1864-1944), who lived during the transitional period between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, took different routes. For instance, the archives of Halide Edip were dispersed to worldwide institutions like Columbia University, Illinois University, the Library of Congress, and Medical History Institution in Istanbul. Today, Fatma Aliye’s documents can be found in the Atatürk Library,
- 39. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 25 whereas Poet Nigar Hanım’s notebooks are kept by the Aşiyan Museum. Apart from her books and essays, only a few letters of Emine Semiye remain. The first woman who donated her private papers to the Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation was Hasene Ilgaz (1902-2000), former MP. There are also the archives which were obtained by the special efforts and demands of the archive department of the Women’s Library. One of the best example of a women’s private papers is the comprehensive archive of Süreyya Ağaoğlu (1903-1989), one of the first woman jurist in Turkey. Beside women’s private archives, the field of women’s organizations records is another important gap to fill. The loss of documents is an urgent matter to solve in this field. To give only one example of women’s organization records, the Union of Turkish Women was founded in 1924 and was forced to dissolve its organization twice because of political reasons. The first was in 1935 when the government took a series of measures against associations, and the second was under the 1980 military coup. And these two anti-democratic practices led to enormous loss of documents. We may also say that the inexistence of mass suffrage movement has resulted in a less massive accumulation of documents, so the preservation reflex did not operate… A second reason may be the lack of a strong well organized feminist organization; and thirdly the ignorance of women-centered archives in other countries that could have been a model in this field. Although the 12th Congress of the International Alliance of Women (IAW) held in Istanbul in 1935 would have been a rare opportunity for Turkish activists to be in touch with the Dutch women’s archive (IAV) through Rosa Manus co-founder of the center who came several times to Turkey as the representative of the International Alliance. Up to now I did not find any trace regarding the subject of founding a women-centered archive before 1990. Today in Turkey first, the circle of women’s archive activists should be widened. Secondly, library and archives studies departments at universities should include “women’s history sources” in the whole curriculum; this field should not be studied only under ‘special archives sections’ because we are talking of documenting half of the humanity and half of the humanity cannot be narrowed to “special archive and library”… Thirdly, a large survey has to be organized to trace and catalogue all documents pertaining to women in all the repositories of Turkey. Two important surveys have been done years ago one in the US and the other one in France. To give only these two examples: After a long preparatory process involving women’s history historians and archivists, a huge survey of primary sources on women started in USA saying that identifying sources is of primordial importance as we have been always told that sources on women were always insufficient to conduct research in this field. The Women’s History Sources Survey at the University of Minnesota between 1975-1979 expressed their aim as follow: “to compile a guide to manuscripts and archival sources for the study of the history of women in the USA (all classes, races and regions) from the colonial period until present.” (Mason, 2013) The project was funded and started in March 1975 just forty years ago and ended 1979; Women’s History Sources Survey was published in two volumes, the first of 1095 pages of collection description and the second of 391 pages of index. According to Gerda Lerner the Women’s History Sources “stand as a visible testament to the existence of sources for women’s history.” On the other hand the catalogue served as a source of inspiration for archivists and this is why it is so important because it helped them to remake a new policy of acquisition for women to be better represented in their holdings and it also helped to discover important women’s documents in less known archive centers. The academic world had been very impressed by the results and the finding of the survey; Eva Moseley wrote in 1980 something which is still on our agenda today “most archivists and manuscripts creator don’t write history but the decision we make, especially in appraising records and papers, and in describing them, we can either promote new trends in research or throw up roadblocks in their way.” (Mason, 2013)
- 40. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 26 The second example is a guide for the sources of feminism’s history in France (Guide des sources de l’histoire du féminisme) from the French revolution up to today. This survey was conducted by Christine Bard, professor of contemporary history at the university of Angers and president of the Association les Archives du Féminisme; Annie Metz director of Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand and Valérie Neveu archivist. We have another important gap to fill related women’s archival documentation in Turkey. And it is most certainly that in the next decades under documented social groups will appear with new institutions and they will enrich the archival records; we will have archive on women musicians and composers, museum and archives on women in visual art, gay and lesbian archive as well as minorities’ women’s archive. The tasks of the first women’s library and archive in the next twenty five years are huge, it has to trace and catalogue the women’s records on a national scale and to pursue an intensive politics of acquisition, preservation and dissemination with well definite target including in this policy the means of disseminating a feminist consciousness to documents; to collaborate with all archival institutions in Turkey in order to improve their acquisition politics of women records and as a final word, I would like to say that the existence of a women-centered archive in itself is a critical attitude towards male dominated archiving. Its existence stands against the historical omission of women in the process of acquisition, preservation and dissemination of documents. References Bard, Christine, M. Annie and N. Valérie (ed.). (2006). Guide des sources de l'histoire du féminisme: De la Révolution française à nos jours. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Burton, Antoinette (ed.). (2005). Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History. London: Duke University Press Books. Çakır, Serpil. "Feminism and Feminist History-Writing in Turkey: The Discovery of Ottoman Feminism". Aspasia: The International Year Book of Central, Eastern and South-eastern European Women’s and Gender History. Volume 1. 2007. Durakbaşa, Ayşe. “Feminist tarih yazımı üzerine notlar”. S. Çakır, & N. Akgökçe (der.) (1996) içinde, Kadın Araştırmalarında Yöntem. İstanbul: Sel. Earnshaw, Gabrielle Lili. “Preserving Records Bearing on The Experience of Women in North America: The Women’s Archives Movement and Its Significance for Appraisal for Acquisition”. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1994. Hildenbrand, Suzanne (ed.). (1986). Women's Collections: Libraries, Archives, and Consciousness. New York: The Howarth Press. Jong, Sara de and Koevoets, Sanne (ed.). (2013). Teaching Gender with Libraries and Archives: The Power of Information. Budapest: Central European University Press. Kadar, Marlene and Buss, Helen M. (ed.). (2001). Working in Women’s Archives Researching Women’s Private Literature and Archival Documents. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
- 41. Aslı Davaz/ METUGWS Conference 2015 Page | 27 Lerner, Gerda. “Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges”. Zanish-Belcher, & A. Voss (ed.) (2013) in, Perspectives on Women's Archives (s. 15-30). Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Mason, K. M. “A Grand Manuscripts Search: The Women's History Sources Survey At the University of Minnesota, 1975-1979”. T. Zanish-Belcher, & A. Voss (ed.) (2013) in, Perspectives on Women's Archives (s. 71-102). Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Mason, K. M., & Zanish-Belcher, T. “A room of One's Own: Women's Archives in the Year 2000”. T. Zanish-Belcher, & A. Voss (ed.) (2013) in, Perspectives on Women's Archives (s. 123-146). Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Moseley, Eva S. “Sources for the ‘New Women's History’”. T. Zanish-Belcher, & A. Voss (ed.) (2013) in, Perspectives on Women's Archives (s. 103-119). Chicago: Society of American Archivists.
- 42. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 28 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Can All Women Fight Together? A Discussion Between Ideals and Realities: Alliances and Diversity in Women’s Movements in Turkey Aslı Polatdemira* , Charlotte Binderb ab Bremen University, Department of Intercultural Education, Germany Abstract The category of gender is a topic open to discussion in poststructural, (queer-) feminist and postcolonial theory, as well as in identity politics of new social movements. The reflection on universal debates on collective subjects of women’s movements comes to existence in Turkey as well. In accordance with this trend, the struggle for gender equality in Turkey faces critical interventions from women from different backgrounds, with various positionings for identities and differentiations. Even structural discrimination of, and violence against women are elements for activists to unite over, topics like dealing with diversity and building coalitions need to be put on the discussion table. By taking the historical steps of women’s movements in Turkey into consideration, this paper aims to explore strategies towards the development of more productive and constructive debates on feminist issues, primarily by recognizing diversity within women’s movements, enabling activists to form new alliances. This paper is based on first findings of field researches in Ankara, Istanbul, Diyarbakır, and smaller cities at the Aegean and the Black Sea Regions in 2014 and 2015 in the frame of an empirical field-research project on “Comparing women’s movements in different cities in Turkey” conducted by Bremen University. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Gender; women’s movement in Turkey; feminism; woman activists; alliances; coalitions; solidarity * Corresponding Author: Aslı Polatdemir Tel.: +49 421 218 69129 E-mail address: polatdemir@uni-bremen.de
- 43. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 29 1. Introduction “Comparing women’s movements in different cities in Turkey” is a three-year project conducted at the University of Bremen and aims to map out the current position of women’s movements within different socio-cultural and regional settings in Turkey. While analysing and reflecting on the diversity of women’s movements and gender-based political positions, and considering the complexity of social structures in Turkey, the study hopes to answer is whether, and to what extent, these women’s movements, despite their differences, work together and, if so, which common, overarching objectives are pursued. Additionally, this study examines how women’s movements network beyond local, regional, and national borders. By taking the historical progress of women’s movements in Turkey into consideration, and by exemplifying angles of women in different cities about specific topics as empirical data, this paper tries to highlights the strategies for productive and constructive approaches which might be developed by recognition of diversity and enable new alliance possibilities for the sake of feminist issues. 2. Research project: “Comparing women’s movements in different cities in Turkey” The research project analyses the agency of, and diversity among women fighting for gender justice in Turkey. The project’s focus also comprises the various identity and alliance policies of multiple women’s and gender-based political movements. It has to be taken into consideration that parallel to international feminist debates, differences within the category of gender were also acknowledged in Turkey by feminists. Questions of identity and related distributions of power have started to become more prominent, especially after critical interventions by Kurdish and Islamist feminists in the 90s (Arat 2008). Women’s groups and feminists started to refer to different identities as, for instance, radical, lesbian, queer*, socialist, religious-conservative, physically challenged, Kurdish, Alevi or Armenian (Binder et al. 2015). The unifying category of ‘woman’ was deconstructed - while structural discrimination and violence against “women” still persists (Müftüler-Baç 2012). How coalitions and common activities based on solidarity and constructive cooperation can still be possible under these circumstances of them being vastly different, is especially interesting for the framework of the project. In order to analyse solidarity and coalitions’ understandings and inner workings, qualitative empirical studies were carried out in Ankara, Istanbul, Diyarbakır, and smaller cities at the Aegean and the Black Sea by Aslı Polatdemir and Charlotte Binder in 2014 and 2015. Data were collected through documents such as flyers, magazines, newspapers etc., field research, and 65 interviews with experts (activists and/or scientists). Identity and alliance policies within and between the different groups and movements are analysed and compared using the data-analysis method for expert interviews, as developed by Meuser and Nagel (2010). The study’s theoretical framework is informed by feminist-orientated social movements research theories (Lenz 2010, 2014), as well as by the concepts of intersectionality.
- 44. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 30 Table 1. Information about conducted interviews Cities Ankara Diyarbakır Aegean Region (Denizli, Muğla) East Black Sea Region (Trabzon, Artvin) Period of field research 03.-04.2014; 09.-10.2014 03.-04.2014; 04.2015 03.-04.2015 06.-07.2015 Number of conducted interviews 20 9 18 18 2.1. Topic of research: diversity of women’s movements The universal category of gender is a topic which is open to discussion in poststructural, (queer-) feminist and postcolonial theory, as well as in the identity politics put forward by new social movements. In the process of social-constructivist transition in Women’s and Gender Studies, the up-to-now collectivist aspects of women’s movements were questioned (Lenz 2002: 78). Aside from exploring coalitions and solidarity in women’s movements in Turkey, this project also puts special emphasis on the integration of this diversity aspect in its research scope. Thus, it is of importance to discuss the project’s title. Due to reflection of universal debates on collective subjects of women’s movements, we decided to apply a feminist-oriented social movement research theory, which conceptualises women’s movements as plural-differentiated and transnationally oriented (Lenz 2014). While putting an ‘-s’ at the end of women’s movement and feminism, we, as the members of research project, do aim to include diverse perspectives. Even if the analysis of our interview material is in an early stage, our first findings could shed light on the specific area which we are targeting. If interviewees have different positions on certain topics, this plural ‘-s’ plays an important role and it needs to be emphasised. İlknur Üstün, coodinator of the Women’s Coalition in Ankara, underlines the necessity of touching upon the topic with special awareness: […] it is important to recognize the diversity, it is a dynamic structure, in all of these diversities, differences it would not be fair to lump them together […]it is necessary to talk about a process when you talk about woman, women’s movement or movements in Turkey. (İlknur Üstün 2014) Violence against women and the ruling government’s misogyny lead to the development of spaces and platforms for coalitions and solidarity, as Gaye Cön, member of the woman centre KAMER from Muğla, points out: “Because each passing day there are more attacks against woman by the government, we often come together there, that is to say if I think about Turkey in general.” (Gaye Cön 2014) However, the beauty of the matter lies not merely in that solidarity should always be pursued, or that coalitions should be formed for everything, but rather in the colourful mosaic of different groups attempting to work together to effect social change. Bahar Bostan, member of the Women’s Rights Commission of Trabzon Chamber of Lawyers, aptly describes it in the following passage: Islamist women, Kurdish women, Turkish women - like socialist feminists, Turkish Women’s Association - we all unite. Especially in case of the state’s invasion of our spaces. However, when human rights and ethnic issues are on the table, or political matters, or political differences, we go our separate ways. Well, when we analyse this as Kurdish
- 45. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 31 Women’s Movement, Turkish Women’s Movement or Secular Women’s Movement, Islamist Women’s Movement, we disintegrate. (Bahar Bostan 2015) Nebahat Akkoç, founder of KAMER and based in Diyarbakır, comments on the intersectional perspective and discusses the interdependent character of women’s issues in the country: […] the main issue in Turkey is still the existence of prejudices and discrimination; I have the impression it is about a lack of clear decisions on whether we want to be on the side of the leading power, or whether we want to remain independent […] we still cannot talk, understand the woman issue as independent, abstracted from the system, as a disconnected issue from other matters, so it remains disconnected. (Nebahat Akkoç 2015) Interviewees, depending on what group they identify with, had diverse perspectives on, for instance, LGBTI rights, sex work or education in their mother tongue. At this point, representation of diversity remains the focal point of this research project. 2.2. Reflection of research: questions on representation Postcolonial theorist Spivak (2008) underlines postcolonial criticisms of representation and knowledge production of Eurocentric research. This research project aims to gain understanding by borrowing from feminist and postcolonial theories in order to properly deal with the delicate matter of this “crisis of representation” (Winter 2011: 76). This recognition of the (re-)construction of reality, knowledge production and epistemic rupture are the leading framework for our approach in the analysis of the interviews. Said’s concept of othering and orientalism (1979) is very helpful when reflecting on the role of researchers from Germany/Europe, and when exploring possible approaches in the fight for women’s equality in Turkey. However, it cannot tell us much about the epistemic assimilation effects that can also be observed. Thus, with reference to Spivak’s concept of epistemic rupture, we want to briefly explain what we refer to when we speak of epistemic assimilation: when discussing the rupture between different discourses, Spivak stresses that every discourse has its own language, its own narratives and its own rules. Therefore, the forms of interaction in one discourse can be very different from those in another discourse. Thus, what counts as adequate or as a good argument is very different in each of those discourses. Following this approach, the planned report on women’s movements in Turkey has to avoid linear references to the German/European discourse of gender struggle when interpreting developments in Turkey. Because when Western epistemic categories are applied in the description of occurrences, it dismisses the discursive properties of the culture this research is studying. To understand, but not to assimilate the activists in Turkey to a German perspective, it is necessary to find out in which categories they are speaking of themselves in order to grasp their self-understanding and their motivation. Taking this into consideration, our aim in the final report is to move beyond orientalist views on women in Turkey, and paint a detailed and appropriate picture of what it means to be a woman in Turkey, and what her struggles are. How does our research team deal with the ‘crisis of representation’, both in theory and in practice? Theory-wise we refer to the aforementioned postcolonial theory and critics of orientalism. This research project was designed to be an empirical study, meaning attempts to bridge the gap between empirical research and theory need to be refined with a special standpoint. The standpoint model of research was developed by feminist social scientists in the late 80s (Harding 2004). In brief, various social positions
- 46. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 32 produce diverse knowledge about the world. Because these positions are continuations of social experience, this produced knowledge should be considered as local, positioned, and situated. For contextualisation, the historical process of women’s movements in Turkey will be outlined and the reactions to the diversification process since the 90s will be taken into account. 3. Brief overview: historical diversification of women’s movements in Turkey The feminist struggle’s roots in Turkey lie in the late phase of Ottoman Empire in 19th century. Educated women among the Istanbul elites organized themselves and fought for women’s rights. In 1923, following the proclamation of Turkish Republic, elements of the women’s movement, to a degree, found their way into the state apparatus. The Kemalist state established “state feminism” (White 2003: 145) as a part of attempts at modernisation and westernisation. With Islamic sharia replaced by civil law based on the Swiss model, polygamy was outlawed in 1926, civil marriage became the norm (Aksoy 2014). After a decades- long feminist struggle for female suffrage, voting rights for women were established by Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 1934. As a result officially Turkish woman represented as emancipated and liberated by the state elites. In social discourse women were considered as ‘mothers of the republic’, i.e. supporters of the new system. However, most of the women in Turkey who lived predominantly in rural areas at that time were affected not by Kemalist elites, but by feudal-patriarchal structures (Wedel 2000: 37). Added together, a discrepancy between formal law and social positioning of women in Turkey could not be denied. But it was only after the coup d’état of 1980 that an independent feminist-oriented women’s movement shaped itself again and they made a political issue out of violence against women. However, the 90s Turkey saw critical interventions in the feminist movement. Apart from the expansion of gender- political demands made by leftist and/or Kurdish movement, the institutionalisation of feminist discourses was on rise. These points led to the emergence of diverse political colours in women’s movements as it will be discussed next. Female activists of Kurdish women’s movement which are organised today particularly under Democratic Free Woman Movement; actually with its new entity Free Woman Congress debates on racism and Turkish nationalism in state and society. Kurdish feminists also questions the homogenised understanding of what being a woman means, which was characterised by Turkish, white, educated, feminist-oriented middle-class women in the 90s. For Kurdish feminists, feminist theory and practice include not only gender-specific female politics, but they take other forms of oppression into consideration, like ethnicity and class-specific differences among woman (Al-Rebholz 2013: 262). Islamist feminists have been publishing since the 80s, and have been organising themselves under, for example, the Capital City Women’s Platform. They denounced the feminist movement, criticising its uncritical acceptance of Western feminist theory, including the orientalist and Eurocentric biases that came with it (Samandi 1997). When Turkey’s LGBTI movement gained traction, heteronormativity within Turkish feminism began to be questioned. In 2001, LGBTI activists represented their political agenda by officially participating in the May 1st demonstration in Ankara, notably organised by associations KAOS GL and Lambdaistanbul (Başaran 2011). Due to this process of diversification, the following question became central for female activists: Will this colourful mosaic serve to enrich to the movement trying to take hold of gender politics in civil society - and subsequently state regulations - or would it undermine their sense of collectivism?
- 47. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 33 How will we stand side by side? How will we stand as one? How will we recognize each other’s different experiences and struggle for each other’s’ rights? How will we get organized around our gendered identities with our ethnic, cultural, class-related, sexual, regional, religious and bodily differences? (Bilal 2006) This chain of questions, put forward by the Armenian feminist and academician Melissa Bilal, clarifies why debates on the politics of solidarity, and on coalitions within the feminist movement happen, despite their differences. Because of contributions from antiracist, antimilitarist and queer perspectives between then and now, autonomous feminists aim to approach to Kurdish women and LGBTI groups. Their mutual opponent, patriarchal structures are identified which oppress women, LGBTI individuals and members of ethnic and religious minorities through sexism, heterosexism, racism and/or militarism (Acar Savran 2011). An example of solidarity between feminists and religious-conservative women is the platform ’We stand by one another’, which was established by female activists, journalists and academics as a reaction to the headscarf debates in 2008. Women only partly affected by the headscarf ban, came together and insisted that female students with a headscarf be freely allowed into university buildings, and thus protected from discrimination based on gender and/or religious affiliation (Koç 2009). However, because of their experiences within leftist movements in the 70s, many autonomous feminists have only collaborated sparingly with leftist and Kemalist-oriented women (Somersan 2011: 100 – 123). Despite all mutual concerns and the diversification process in the frame of historical steps of women’s movements in the country, how could (im-)possibilities of solidarity and coalitions be put on the table while there are endless responses and subjective concepts of “being-a-woman”? 4. (Im-)Possibility of coalitions despite of diverse reflections on “being-a-woman“? There are many different responses to the interview question “Being a women - what does it mean to you?”: […]we talk about a creature which maintains its life, contributes hugely to social relations, but with its other part being oppressed, exploited, in other words like summation of being subject and object. (Figen Aras 2015) […] she is in part a biological creature, with reproductive organs and breasts, but […] being a woman means one has to carry lots of things together with place, culture and people you live with. Both living its delightfulness but more struggle with its difficulties. (İlknur Üstün 2014) […] being a woman is also something we learn about. [...] all cases of being woman, man and so forth are speculative for me and personally my thing is, you know if the current situation would not be like this, I would not emphasize my female identity, I would not make women’s policy. In other words because it does not fit to my attitude, I love to define myself as a woman as well as a man rather than only as woman or man. But actually you know I insistently stress my woman identity because we live in a terrible state of society, surely I believe it is necessary to struggle for this. (Pelin Kalkan 2014) Since we have endless explanations of what being a woman even means, how can we even talk about whether all women can fight together? Interviews conducted in 2014 and 2015, and literature analyses
- 48. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 34 provide evidence for orientation of feminist activists to follow ensuing strategies to overcome essentialist tendencies of identity. Being a woman is not conceptualized in an essentialist way, but there should be spaces for women which are as free from violence, hierarchy and hegemony as possible, allowing them to talk together about their various experiences. The aim of these exchanges is to initiate learning processes, solidarities and the development of a common vocabulary. Then principles of solidarity in daily life and in political actions should be supplemented on the basis of inclusivity and reflexivity. The introduction of new terms could be considered as resulting from these efforts, for example women in Turkey or women from Turkey instead of Turkish women as well as feminicide as opposed to honour killing or multilingual publications and speeches on demonstrations. Another example is the welcoming of participants of 8th of March demonstrations in diverse ethnic minority languages in addition to Turkish. Feminist agendas and applications are also shaped by questions about, and criticisms of discourses connected to nationalism, racism, heterosexism and transphobia together with anti-militarist positioning and a diversification of topics discussed within women’s movements. Despite of all contrasts and pluralisation, Sancar at least partially (2008) speaks about a singular women’s movement in Turkey, which deals with mutual topics of interest. In the struggle for equality there are certain topics which join both activists already organised in diverse movements and independent women. Debates on, and struggles over not only sexual violence and feminicide, but also the employment of women, body politics and women’s political participation lead women to enter collective coalitions and build solidarity among themselves. Reform of the penal code proceeded in the context of negotiations over accession to the European Union (EU) between the EU and Turkey is another instance of a successful coalition. So the Women’s Platform on the Turkish Penal Code was founded by 29 women and LGBTI organisations from all across Turkey in 2002. This alliance led to the building of national working group for an NGO-shadow report for UN- CEDAW. The report was presented in 2012, and was supported by feminist organisations like Amargi and the Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation, but also by religious-conservative representatives of Capital City Women’s Platform. Together with Kemalist women, for example Turkish Women’s Association, LGBTI organisations were also on the side of the supporters (CEDAW Sivil Toplum Yürütme Kurulu ve TCK Kadın Platformu 2010: 1 – 2). These points show that diverse types of women’s movements in Turkey can work together in successful coalitions, especially on international standards related topics such as UN- CEDAW and/or the concept of human rights of women (Acar and Altunok 2009: 26 – 27). According to the primary findings in our field researches, these observations could be applied on a smaller scale, as well. Denizli Women’s Platform and Muğla Women’s Solidarity Group should be considered as the result of coalition building among diverse strands of women’s movements in Turkey on national level, in periphery. These coalitions in selected Aegean cities by research team have almost the same aim: Overcoming their ideological differences to build alliances, and to stand together in gender- specific events, developments or struggles. However, as a member of Denizli Women’s Platform underlines, the process is not smooth and conflict-free, but in the end finding a common vocabulary is also possible: “We got so angry, we screamed, cried out but we really organised women who could be the organisers of this work there, that is, we caused their inner feminist to emerge.” (Özge Sarma et al. 2015) In the East Black Sea Region attempts at building coalitions have also succeeded. In Trabzon, which could be described as economic and cultural hub in the region, platforms where women with various ideological backgrounds united are older and more deeply rooted. Moreover, it also has connections with other women’s organisations across Turkey. In the central province and Hopa in Artvin, collective
- 49. Aslı Polatdemir andCharlotte Binder / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 35 coalitions are at the beginning of this process, though be it hesitantly. However, compelling process is noticeable, and dealing with diversity is a topic of discussion, as Nurcan Ay Katırcı, spokeswoman of Artvin Women’s Solidarity Platform comments: We all are different people, people with different habits, but thanks to our plan for a collectivism suitable for everybody’s purposes and targets, we do not have very clear, sharp thing, I mean for now, lines. (Nurcan Ay Katırcı 2015) 5. Conclusion On the grounds of the historical development of women’s movements in Turkey, in combination with the afore mentioned diversification and diverse ideological standpoints, can (feminist) women’s and LGBTI movements in Turkey accomplish a solidarity-based collaboration and aim for mutual goals? Or are they doomed to remain too distant from one another to reflect on mainstream political conflicts due to differences and diverse positionings? This paper aimed to raise these questions, while explaining the concept of the research project and its theoretical backgrounds, like ‘crisis of representation’, postcolonial sensibility and feminist stand point theory, as well as introducing the preliminary findings of our field research in selected cities in Turkey. Even though the debate on (im-)possibility of solidarity and coalitions in women’s movements in Turkey is endless, there are milestones which could be considered as examples for possibilities. It is even popular to talk about participation of women in Gezi Protests in 2013, the tightening of abortion laws planned by the AKP government mobilised hundreds of thousands of women, for instance in the campaign ‘My body! My decision!’. Women were on the streets nation-wide in order to stop draft law. And as an event that resonated on an international level, the Gezi Protests could also be considered a solidarity platform for women, keeping in mind that half of the Gezi protestors were women (KONDA 2013). During violent clashes with police and political meetings women participated in these events. Feminists and LGBTI activists ensured their visibility in the park with their recognisable tents. After the Gezi Protests, discussion about women and gender specific topics could be witnessed, particularly during the Yoğurtçu Park Women’s Forum in Istanbul. Finally, the murder of Özgecan Arslan in 2015 led to an outpouring of women on the streets, and to the cyber campaign ‘#tellyourstory’ encouraging women to come out with their experience of sexual violence. Some feminist activists criticize the responses that the attempted rape and murder was against an ‘innocent’ and ‘honourable’ young girl during daytime, and how these country-wide actions reproduce traditional and patriarchal values. They point out several similar cases with married women, transsexuals, sex workers etc. and how this mostly led to silence or at best limited reactions. However, the reason the Artvin Women’s Solidarity Platform was established, was that the Özgecan demonstration in Artvin empowered them to seek other women in town to ‘start and do something’. It can be safely assumed that solidary actions - at least among participants and supporters of Gezi protests – were strengthened as a results of common opposition to the AKP government. Gender-related bureaucratic regulations, like abortion law for example, a political agenda, like with the Gezi Protests, and, most importantly, body politics and sexual violence could cause women to fight collectively against misogynist and patriarchal structures.
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- 52. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 38 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Liberal, Critical and Rejectionist Discourses: Voices of Women Activists on Civil Society in Turkey Asuman Özgür Keysan* University of Strathclyde, Department of Government and Public Policy, United Kingdom Abstract Dominant approaches to civil society are gender-biased and neo-liberal in character. Currently, these dominant views have been contested in non-Western contexts, as it is widely highlighted in the academic literature on civil society and NGOs, particularly the women’s NGOs in the Middle East, including Turkey. There are various studies rethinking civil society by looking at the women’s position and activism in the site of civil society and indicating gendered dimensions of civil society and state. Nonetheless, we have limited knowledge about how NGOs in general, and women’s NGOs in particular, can contribute to the field of meaning around civil society. In this paper, I aim to respond to this gap in the literature by focusing on the voices of women activists in Turkey on the concept of civil society and identifying whether and in what ways they produce alternative understandings that may contest gendered hegemonic visions of civil society currently circulating in Turkey. For my Turkish case study, I employ feminist critical discourse analysis methodology to make sense of forty-one semi-structured interviews conducted with women activists from Kemalist, Islamic, Kurdish, feminist and anti-capitalist organizations. I make two main sets of empirical arguments about this data. The first is that members of women’s organizations in Turkey articulate at least seven discourses of civil society, with organizations often circulating several simultaneously and with discourses cutting across different organizations in ways that belie what are often seen as fundamental ideological differences and contestations in the Turkish context. The second is that, while most of the discourses produced by the women activists mirror to some degree the liberal democratic ideals of civil society such as voluntarism, autonomy and mediation, they also contest that hegemonic articulation, whether by critiquing non-oppositional, hierarchic and non-democratic civil society practices or rejecting “civil society activism”, which would produce alternative resistance points. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Civil society, gender, women’s organisations, Turkey, feminist critical discourse analysis * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90 312 210 6730 E-mail address: asumanozgur@gmail.com.
- 53. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 39 1. Introduction Civil society is a contested concept. The first political struggle over the theory and practice of civil society is the contemporary dominance of a neoliberal version, and its contestation. Despite the existence of diverse traditions in the civil society literature, since the global revival of the concept in the 1980s the meaning of the concept has become more fixed and civil society was perceived by both policy-makers and scholars as a way of overcoming a range of problems associated with authoritarianism and the crisis of the welfare state. In this context, international institutions such as the EU, the United Nations (UN), and the World Bank (WB) have employed the notion of civil society as a policy tool for promoting democracy and development, including in the Middle East. However, civil society is also associated by the international organisations with neoliberal policies intended to shrink the developmental and welfare state, bringing with it an emphasis on the delegation of key responsibilities to non-governmental organisations (NGO), including women’s NGOs, in the areas of poverty, education, health and the like, a fact that has garnered significant critique (see Dvoráková, 2008). The second political struggle over civil society hinges on the gendered character of the theory and practice of civil society. Feminist thinkers and commentators locate the gendered bias of the term, particularly the liberal/neoliberal versions of civil society, in the reification of a public/private divide (see Squires, 2003). In this regard, civil society is associated with masculine traits and roles. By exposing the reification of the liberal public/private dichotomy, feminist theorists highlight the interaction between civil society and both public and private spheres, and bring the family, considered as a part of the private or domestic sphere, back into political consideration (Benhabib and Cornell, 1987: 7). The dominant neoliberal and gendered version of civil society is contested across the Middle East, including in Turkey. In addition to the many studies in the region which criticise neoliberal civil society, there are scholars who seek to rethink civil society in the Middle East by looking at women’s position and activism (see Arenfeldt and Golley, 2012; Chatty and Rabo, 1997). This paper builds upon and seeks to contribute to these critical interrogations of civil society in Turkey but takes as its starting point the question of how NGOs in general, and women’s NGOs in particular, can contribute to the field of meaning around civil society, as this has not been widely discussed in the academic literature. In this paper, I aim to respond to this gap in the literature by focusing on the voices of women activists in Turkey on the concept of civil society and identifying whether and in what ways they produce alternative understandings that may contest gendered hegemonic visions of civil society. In this regard, I will analyse women’s civil society discourses by offering a detailed analysis of data based on primary empirical research, including 41 interviews with members of ten women’s organisations in Turkey, namely TKB (Turkish Women’s Union), TÜKD (Turkish Association of University Women), AKDER (Women’s Rights Organisation against Discrimination), BKP (Capital City Women’s Platform Association), KAMER Foundation, SELİS Association, KA-DER (Association for the Support and Training of Women Candidates), US (Flying Broom), SFK (Socialist Feminist Collective) and AMARGİ Association, and their campaigning literature available to me at their offices or online. I will make two main arguments in this paper. The first is that members of women’s organizations in Turkey articulate at least seven discourses of civil society, namely “voluntarism”, “autonomy”, “mediation”, “democratization”, “opposition”, “anti-hierarchy” and “co-optation”, with organizations often circulating several simultaneously and with discourses cutting across different organizations in ways that belie what are often seen as fundamental ideological differences and contestations in the Turkish context. The second is that, while most of the discourses produced by the women activists mirror to some degree the dominant liberal/neoliberal democratic ideals of civil society such as voluntarism, autonomy and mediation, they also contest that hegemonic articulation, whether by critiquing non-oppositional, hierarchic and non-democratic
- 54. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 40 civil society practices or rejecting “civil society activism”, which would produce alternative resistance points. I will organize this paper under two main headings. After briefly elaborating on the methodology, methods and field of the study, I will analyze women’s civil society discourses based on 41 in-depth interviews and group documentation. 2. Methodological Framework My case study data consists of forty-one in-depth and semi-structured interviews with the women activists from ten women’s organisations located in four different cities, Ankara, Istanbul, Diyarbakir and Batman in Turkey. Interviewing is “a powerful research tool for feminist researchers interested in exploring women’s experiences and the contexts that organize their experiences” (De Vault and Gross, 2012: 229). In this sense, it is a crucial method for feminist research as it “gives voice” to those participating in the research (Sprague, 2005: 120); in my study, this means giving a platform to women’s perspectives and allowing their voices to be heard. The interviews took place over a period of three and a half months, between May and mid-August, 2012. The interviews were based on questions which probed a range of issues, including demographic details; the women’s history of activism; civil society and its relation to power; hierarchy and domination; the women’s views on the relationship between civil society and gender; the EU’s approach to civil society and its role in funding Turkish women’s organisations; feminism; and the organisational structure of the CSOs. In addition, I gathered documentation in the form of written sources and web site materials produced by the women’s groups. In terms of the selection of women’s organisations and interviewees for this research, I engaged in purposive sampling. In order to do so, I rethought the dominant political standpoint-based categorisation and re-categorised the women’s organisations in Turkey according to five criteria: the ideological/political standpoint, geographical location, the relationship to the EU funding, organisational structure and framing of women’s rights and feminism. This enabled me to capture a reasonable spread of views between and within each group. Thus, I spoke to women activists from a range of social backgrounds who were of varying ages, possessed varying degrees of political experience, had taken varying trajectories into women’s rights activism and civil society, held varying positions in the group (e.g. the leaders of organisations and ordinary members), and had been employed in different industries and professions. I reached from six to ten women activists from each category of women’s group and my respondents are mostly educated professionals from middle-class backgrounds. I was attentive to feminist research ethics in the interview process. I was keen to form non-hierarchical and reciprocal relationships with my respondents, to be open and transparent with them, and to avoid taking a traditional approach to research which emphasises “objectivity, efficiency, separateness and distance” (Reinharz, 1992: 24). Despite such intentions, I also recognised that it would not be possible to form a totally equal relationship between researcher and respondents. Moreover, I guaranteed that the data would be fully confidential and anonymised before it was analysed. In particular, I assured participants that in my written analysis I would only refer to organisational names and personal pseudonyms when referencing from data. 3. Civil Society Discourses of Women Activists: Alternative Voices? While analyzing the civil society discourses of women activists in Turkey, I will respond to two questions: First, what are the main features of the civil society discourses articulated by women activists in Turkey? Second, in what ways and to what extent do these discourses reproduce and/or contest the hegemonic gendered and liberal/neoliberal civil society discourses. On the basis of the answers to these questions, I will group the women activists’ civil society discourses around three categories: a. liberal b. critical and c. radical
- 55. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 41 approach. 3.1. Liberal approach: “Voluntary, autonomous and mediatory civil society” 3.1.1. Voluntarism Discourse According to the voluntarism discourse, civil society is a space of voluntary activity, especially for women. Voluntarism is interpreted as an indispensable principle of civil society and identified with no personal gain. As the oldest interviewee from the Kemalist TKB states, “everything you have done – all your labour and effort – is for an aim and there is no benefit from it. … No one forces us to do that; we do it on our own” (interview with Sevda, May 8, 2012). This discourse is reproduced by almost all of the women from KA-DER, who posit “voluntarism” and “self-determination” as the main tenets of civil society and the guiding principles of the association itself. In contrast, Islamic women made very few references in interview to the voluntaristic dimensions of civil society. However, we still see an emphasis on voluntarism in their literature, such as in the book From Yesterday to Today. Within this voluntarism discourse from Kemalist groups and KA-DER, the identity of women activists is constructed in a particular way, as ‘responsible volunteer women’. To illustrate: the Kemalists and some women from KA-DER linked “being a volunteer woman” to the concepts of “responsibility”, “duty” and “commitment”. A gendered dimension to civil society discourse is introduced here in that the intersection of voluntarism discourse with responsibility centres on an image of women who do not anticipate or gain any benefit for carrying out their civil duties, and who are charged with the mission of civil society development as well the promotion of women’s rights. Moreover, voluntarism is explicitly not identified as a type of leisure pursuit or social activity, as made clear by the youngest woman from TKB, in her forties: “I think any civil society work which is seen as a social activity will not go anywhere” (interview with Lale, May 7, 2012). In this way, only the women’s organisations have achieved the status of “genuine” CSO, as Tansu, an older woman activist from the TKB states: “only the women’s organisations have civil society consciousness.... In other organisations, it is not as developed as in the women’s organisations” (interview, May 4, 2012). The responsibility aspect of the voluntarism discourse can also be seen in the emphasis on the educating and consciousness-raising roles of women’s groups in civil society, with CSOs expected to reach out to people, inform them and raise them up, especially on the Kemalist view. This has functioned to reinforce a paternalistic, top-down positioning of Kemalist women as enlightened leaders in contrast to ordinary ignorant people, which is characteristic of the modernisation discourse and which, as Kadıoğlu (1998: 94) points out, has been an element of the Kemalist education mission since the establishment of the Turkish Republic. 3.1.2. Autonomy Discourse Among the women’s civil society discourses, the autonomy discourse is the most prevalent in which women activists apart from SFK and AMARGİ position civil society “above political parties, political organisations and ideologies” and “independent from the state or government and funding”. Women interviewees from Kemalist groups and KAMER circulate the first aspect of the autonomy discourse. The insistence that civil society organisations should be ideology-free emerges on the subject of solidarity amongst politically active women. To illustrate, the women activists from the Kemalist groups that I interviewed frame “womanhood” as an identity that creates common ground for women’s CSOs irrespective of ideological identification. However, after further probing on this issue, it became clear that the perceived solidarity of women has limits. Some interviewees from the Kemalist groups, in particular, find markers of Islamic identity and faith problematic. Buket’s interview is striking because while the need for cooperation
- 56. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 42 with headscarved women is acknowledged, it shows intolerance about the visibility of headscarved women in the public sphere: “I get annoyed when I see headscarved women at the table in the Ministry of Environment … It seems primitive in this decade” (interview, May 10, 2012). What the reproduction of the secularism-Islamism distinction here helps to reveal is the way in which the autonomy discourse is bound up for Kemalists with the ideal of Republican woman as “educated, urban, non-headscarf wearing” (Özçetin, 2009: 106). The second dimension of autonomy discourse produced by the activists from all organisations apart from SFK and AMARGI assumes that a free civil society is set apart from government and not controlled by it. The importance of a free civil society dovetails with, and can only be understood in light of, the distinction among activists between pro-government and anti-government organisations. On the basis of this dichotomy, they re-categorize CSOs in Turkey. According to the Kemalists, pro-government organisations – in particular Islamic women’s organisations – muddy the important distinction between civil society and government because they are not critical of the government. In contrast to the Kemalist women, Islamic women lament the lack of autonomy in civil society and criticise the power of the state to destroy its independent and critical dimensions without specifying any groups as pro or anti-government. The women activists from KAMER also seek to maintain independence from the state. According to all KAMER members, state control of CSOs is unacceptable. In response, they argue for a “non-partisanship” approach. However, the women from KAMER, differently from the other groups, relate ethnic identity with the autonomy of civil society. Nuray, from KAMER, states that women “moderate” their ethnic identity with respect to their organising work so as to “make room for other women to stand beside them and to become more independent” (interview, May 16, 2012). In this sense, it could be argued that the autonomy discourse works to transcend ethnic differences in this case. Though KAMER members recognise the benefits of independence, they face obstacles of maintaining independence, particularly in light of the on-going conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish people in South-Eastern and Eastern Anatolia. Therefore, proving their independence to others and gaining trust are ongoing tasks. What is more, as well as across the Kemalist, Islamic groups, activists from KA-DER and US stress the need to maintain financial independence from government. Indeed, they attach negative meanings to CSOs being supported by the state because of the way this potentially undermines CSO autonomy. 3.1.3. Mediation Discourse The mediation discourse is the second common discourse produced by the women activists from Kemalist, Islamic groups and the women from US, KA-DER and KAMER. This discourse implies civil society plays a key intermediatory role between the state and society. Differently from Kemalist and Islamic women activists, the women from US and KA-DER articulate a rather different approach to the mediating role of civil society, one which is more instrumental in character. They support this role only because they know that siding with the state brings access to resources, including valuable information, which they also acknowledge comes at a cost. It should be noted that the women activists from Kemalist, Islamic and KAMER bring attention to a disjuncture between the ideal and the reality conveyed by the mediation discourse. Ideally, in their view civil society should act as an intermediary between the state and the people but this is very difficult to achieve in Turkey. Thus Kemalist women point to the ways in which the AKP Governments have marginalised associations which advocate Kemal Atatürk’s ideas and the idea of a Republican secular state, labelling them “anti-government”. Despite their relative visibility under the AKP regimes, Islamic women explain their relative marginalisation from the AKP government by referring to their distance and deviation from what
- 57. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 43 they regard as “pro-government” organisations. For women activists from the KAMER, the disjuncture between the ideal and the reality in terms of the mediation discourse is due rather to the gender ideology of the AKP Governments. Nuray from KAMER states that although they are trying to create a relationship with the state based on dialogue and empathy, this is not happening due to the AKP’s gender policy (interview, May 16, 2012). Some women activists from BKP echo the women from KAMER when they account for their organisation’s marginalisation by making reference to gendered exclusions. Thus Nurten, for one, highlights “a sardonic and trivialising viewpoint of the government or state officials towards the organisations working on women’s issues... this has a negative impact on the women’s associations” (interview, August 9, 2012). She adds that what lies behind this attitude is “the dominance of the male point of view and the man’s fear of losing authority” in civil society (interview, August 9, 2012). 3.2. Critical Approaches: “Oppositional, anti-hierarhical and democratic civil society” 3.2.1. Opposition discourse Women activists from the Kemalist TKB, Islamic BKP and Kurdish SELİS, stakes out a more clearly oppositional position, insisting that civil society should be conceived as an anti-systemic agent. For a few Kemalist women from TKB, the “established system” in Turkey is the AKP government regime. In this regard, repressive and anti-secularist elements of AKP rule such as the restrictions on the right to protest, the Ergenekon (a clandestine organisation) and Balyoz (Sledgehammer) are highlighted as particularly disconcerting for the Kemalist women. On the basis of those concerns, Kemalist activists construct a binary opposition between pro-systemic, “non-adversarial” and anti-systemic “unorganised” civil society. Using this categorisation, these women position Islamic organisations as assimilated and their own associations under the category of “anti-systemic” organisations, thus reproducing existing polarisations with the Turkish women’s movement along secular/Islamic lines. For a small group of the Islamic women activists that I interviewed, “the system” is identified with state tradition and ideology in general, and the authority of the Republican state in particular. In a reverse of the anti-systemic discourse of the Kemalist women activists, Islamic women’s oppositional discourse centres on criticism of the laicist and Republican authoritarian ideology of the state. In this regard, civil society is produced as an alternative space to the established system; it is discursively referred to as a platform where people voice their criticism of the state. Differently, interviewees from SELİS uniformly articulated an oppositional anti-systemic discourse, but in this context, “anti-systemic” refers to “anti-state and anti- power”. They describe the state as a “masculine state” and as a set of institutions that categorise some people as “the other (ötekileştiren)”. The target of critique here is not a specific state structure controlled by governments but the idea of the state itself. In addition, activists from SELİS are very critical of the intertwining of state and capitalism, which results in the marketisation of civil society. This is reflected in their critique of the established links between CSOs and funding. Funded projects are considered to lead to the formation of power areas in civil society and obliterate its adversarial drive. It is in this light that we should understand the distinction between conformist and oppositional versions of civil society drawn here. 3.2.2. Anti-hierarchy discourse Most of the women from KAMER, SELİS, US, KA-DER and AMARGİ envisage civil society as a site in which CSOs should have a non-hierarchical and horizontal organizational structure. It invokes an aspiration to create a civil society which pursues equality and an end to hierarchical social relations, whether
- 58. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 44 such relations arise from within civil society or between CSOs and the state. The anti-hierarchy discourse is mainly discussed with regard to relationships within CSOs, and specifically the issue of representation and leadership. The critique of hierarchy dovetails for many of my interviewees with their critique of patriarchy. The women activists from SELİS and KAMER certainly identified male dominance as one of the roots of hierarchy. As Reşide, one of the youngest activists from SELİS, comments, “We grow up with this hierarchical structure in which mother is always in the kitchen, is responsible for the child care and the father works outside. It is all these little things we grow up with” (interview, May 22, 2012). The fact that dominance in the family translates into dominance of men in mixed group decision-making processes in civil society annoys these women, and is contrary to their equality-based understanding of civil society. In line with this approach, the CSOs dominated by men and attributing traditional gender roles to women are called into question as Reşide from SELİS articulates in the following extract: “…for example, in one of the meetings I participated in, there were some women who can said that “if a woman does cleaning at home, gets along well with her husband, she is not exposed to violence”...there are also civil society organisations [that support this kind of idea]” (interview, May 22, 2012). Differently, some interviewees from KA-DER and AMARGI emphasize that the transformation of civil society can only be realised by feminism. While integrating a feminist approach into civil society is acknowledged as being “difficult due to the dominance of hierarchies within and between the civil society organisations” (interview with Çiçek, KA-DER, July 21, 2012), Duygu, one of the oldest members of AMARGİ that I interviewed, argues that feminism has already had a significant impact on civil society. She says that “it is feminism that will bring horizontal organisation into the society … and should develop relationships with civil society” (interview, June 2, 2012). 3.2.3. Democratization discourse The emphasis on the democratic outcomes of the promotion of civil society activism lies at the heart of democratization discourse, which is circulated by the women from the KAMER, SELİS, US and KA-DER. Nonetheless, these women activists from two different groups have different ideas about what the main goal of democratization should be. Whereas almost all of women from KAMER and SELİS evoke a civil society area free of discriminatory ideas and practices, women from US and KA-DER refer to a civil society space which becomes more civil through the promotion of active-citizenship. The interviewees from both Kurdish organisations focus their attention on the need for civil society to combat discrimination. They frame discrimination between and within CSOs as a “democratic failure”, and their emphasis upon it is linked to the regional and ethnic problems they encounter as Kurdish women and as individuals working within Kurdish women’s organisations. In the first place, they argue that they face discrimination on the basis of ethnic difference coded in geographical terms. Thus Nuray from KAMER mentions that she is bothered by some people from other organisations referring to her as “coming from the Eastern part of Turkey” (interview, May 16, 2012), i.e. the Kurdish regions of Eastern and South-Eastern Anatolia. As noted by Derya from KAMER: “One of the problematic areas in the civil society is discrimination … We can see it when we go to the West from the East [of Turkey] for project work. When I say I am from Diyarbakır [a city in Eastern Anatolia], you can see eyebrows are raised, because they have some type of profile in their minds, and they get surprised if the person they met doesn’t fit into this profile....” (interview, May 17, 2012). For Derya, this discrimination can even result in violence: she goes on to describe a Women’s Shelter Congress held in 2012 in which “Our women friends coming from the East and South- East were almost lynched, they had to be guarded and sent away after they felt their lives were in danger … This is ridiculous … This is where we are in civil society” (interview, May 17, 2012). Unlike the women
- 59. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 45 from KAMER, my interviewees from SELİS focus on the discrimination produced by the state and its policies in Turkey. They refer to “divisions” in society, whether taking the form of gender divisions between men and women, ethnic divisions between Turkish and Kurdish people, or religions divisions between Christians and Muslims, as resulting in “othering” by the state. Women activists from KA-DER and US also appeal to the democratisation discourse, but differently from the Kurdish women activists, emphasising how the development of democratic culture depends, among other things, on the idea and practices of active citizenship. For them, active citizenship is promoted and accommodated within CSOs since these organisations are ideally suited to representing “the people”. 3.3. Rejectionist Approach: Co-optation Discourse The co-optation discourse hinges on the idea that civil society is an agent of co-optation. This view, articulated by all the women I interviewed from SFK and some from AMARGİ, rejects “civil society activism”. For these women, civil society in Turkey has been subject to co-optation by the state. Specifically, they pose a challenge to CSOs by framing civil society as a depoliticising and non-feminist force. Their main line of criticism is based on unveiling the contradictions within the understanding and practices of civil society. In this context, civil society as it actually exists in Turkey is described as: i. depoliticisng in terms of the activity it promotes, ii. status- and interest-seeking, and iii. a buffer zone between the state and the market. I will deal with each of these points in turn. The first dimension of the co-optation discourse constructs a dichotomy between civil society and feminist politics, and highlights the de-politicisation of civil society. That is to say, feminist organisations are positioned in contrast to other CSOs, and CSO politics more generally is viewed as reproducing capitalist structures and substantially concealing systemic inequalities by adopting a narrow, issue-based mindset where problems are viewed in isolation from each other. In this sense, these women activists use pejorative phrases like “professionalism” and “maintenance of the system” in order to describe civil society, and do not view it as an arena for transformative political struggle as Burçak from AMARGİ makes clear: “I don’t respect civil society from my point of view, you can’t respect it in a way. It is a nice thing, but not radical ... It obscures the existing problem, does not say anything to transform it” (interview, July 2, 2012). In this context, many activists from feminist and anti-capitalist groups refuse to refer to their organisation as CSOs. Thus some interviewees from AMARGİ prefer to see themselves as part of a “women’s organisation” than a CSO, seeing this term as challenging the dominant perceptions of civil society as being “above-politics” and specialised. In line with this approach, women from SFK prefer to employ the term “democratic mass organisation (DMO)” rather than “civil society organisation”. For all of the anti-capitalist feminists from this group, the site of civil society in Turkey is divided into two groups: CSOs supported by international funding and DMOs. These two distinct groups are also defined respectively as the “state-approved and non-state approved”. The second dimension of the co-optation discourse is that civil society is considered an instrument for status and interest-seeking. When presidency, delegation and representation start to play a key role in a civil society organisation, according to the anti-capitalist women that I interviewed, a CSO turns into an instrument for gaining capital and status and is easily manipulated by the state/governments. In other words, the internal organisational hierarchies of CSOs means that those leading the organisation become detached from the membership profile, as Esra argues: “Civil society has serious hierarchies within itself CSOs are becoming power domains as being a president or something else there is a prestigious thing” (interview, June 16, 2012). The solution to combat these problems is located in “bottom-up politics” and direct political participation in decision-making procedures, rather than more representational procedures.
- 60. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 46 The third dimension of the co-optation discourse is that civil society functions to serve as a buffer zone between the state and capitalism. Anti-capitalist women activists believe that when civil society plays this role, it permanently blocks the possibility of solving the problems of the capitalist system caused by both the state and market relations, as Elçin from SFK highlights: “I think the civil society is an intermediate agent that would tolerate the inequalities faced by individuals, on their behalf, as a result of powerful attacks of capital and the state. In this regard, the state is understood to be in need of civil society in order to manufacture consent; it is seen to gain legitimacy through civil society”. “The state needs civil society to be able to promote politics, to create this hegemony” (interview with Esra, AMARGİ, June 16, 2012). Because of this understanding of state-civil society relations, most of the anti-capitalist women activists characterise the dominant perception of civil society projects creating “a free and equal world” as a “delusion” (interview with Betül, AMARGİ, June 15, 2012) 4. Conclusion To conclude, the women activists in Turkey articulate at least seven discourses of civil society, with organizations often circulating several simultaneously and with discourses cutting across different organizations in ways that belie what are often seen as fundamental ideological differences and contestations in the Turkish context. While most of the discourses produced by the women activists mirror to some degree the liberal democratic ideals of civil society such as voluntarism, autonomy and mediation, they also contest that hegemonic articulation, whether by critiquing non-oppositional, hierarchic and non-democratic civil society practices or rejecting “civil society activism”, which would produce alternative resistance points. What is more, I would argue the critiques voiced by women activists, in general, and the rejectionist view, in particular, are important and merit further attention. Women activists from almost all of the groups (excepting SFK) indicate the ways in which relations and practices within civil society continually undermine the realisation of normative ideals. They also challenge the gendered hierarchies and unequal power relationships that dominate the civil society by advocating women’s and/or feminist politics. And the rejectionist approach, articulated by women from SFK and AMARGİ, goes further by arguing for the replacement of civil society activism with feminist politics, as part of an alternative vision of a democratic Turkey, one that is less about adding women into civil society and more about foregrounding feminist agency. Despite the fact that it is articulated by a minority voice, this approach is important due to its explicitly feminist character and transformatory potential. It deserves to be more widely discussed within the women’s movement in Turkey and among feminist scholars of civil society, as it points to the potential emergence of counter-hegemonic voices within civil society. In sum, in line with Pratt (2005), Abdelrahman (2004) and Kuzmanovic (2012), I would argue that the critical and rejectionist approaches of women activists are important for challenging the power relations that dominate civil society, and for creating new terms for and language about civil society in the Turkish context. References Arenfeldt, P. and Golley, N. A. (2012) ‘Introduction’. In: P. Arenfeldt and N. A. Golley (eds.), Mapping Arab Women's Movement: A Century of Transformations from Within, Cairo: The American Univetsity in Cairo Press (kindle edition) Benhabib. S. and Cornell, D. (1987) Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late- Capitalist Society. Cambridge: Polity Press Chatty, D. and Rabo, A. (1997) ‘Formal and Informal Women’s Groups in the Middle East’. In D. Chatty and A. Rabo (eds.), Organizing Women: Formal and Informal Women's Groups in the Middle East, Oxford: Berg Publications, pp.1-22.
- 61. Asuman Özgür Keysan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 47 De Vault, M. L. and Gross, G. (2012) ‘Feminist Qualitative Interviewing: Experience, Talk and Knowledge’. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (ed.) Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, 2nd edition, London: Sage, pp.206-237. Dvoráková, V. (2008) ‘Civil Society in Latin America and Eastern Europe: Reinvention or Imposition?’. International Political Science Review, 29(5), pp.579-594. Kadıoğlu, A. (1998) ‘The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity’. Middle Eastern Studies, 32(2), pp.177-193. Özçetin, H. (2009) ‘Breaking the Silence’: The Religious Muslim Women’s Movement in Turkey’. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 11(1), pp.106-119. Reinharz, S. (1992) Feminist Methods in Social Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sprague, J. (2005) Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Squires, J. (2003) ‘Public and Private’. In Bellamy, R. and Mason, A. (eds.), Political Concepts. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.131-145.
- 62. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 48 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Media Coverage of International Women’s Day Demonstrations in Turkey After 2002 Atilla Barutçua* , Figen Uzar Özdemirb ab Bülent Ecevit University, Department of Sociology, Turkey Abstract This paper examines the way “March 8 Demonstrations” on the International Women’s Day is presented in three newspapers in Turkey after the neo-conservative Justice and Development Party (JDP) came into power in 2002. “March 8 Demonstrations” are the most popular form of the women’s movement in Turkey as most of the feminist and LGBTI organizations take part in the demonstrations. These demonstrations represent what “feminism” and “women’s movement” are for the general public. Hence, the coverage of women’s demonstrations by the newspapers shapes the attitudes of many people about women’s movements and feminists; so it might have an effect on the future mobilization of the movement in Turkey. We made a content analysis of three newspapers: Hürriyet (mainstream newspaper of the most powerful media group); Yeni Şafak (neo-conservative and Islamist newspaper) and Radikal (which lost its oppositional character by time). We aimed to analyze how “March 8 Demonstrations” in Turkey were covered during JDP rule: whether they are totally ignored; trivialized by focusing on the entertainment side of them or given wide coverage to raise awareness to women’s issues. We found out that these demonstrations in Turkey are usually reported as “events” rather than social movements. The newspapers usually portray the demonstrators not as agents who upper their voices against women’s problems. Moreover, different newspapers report the demonstrations in juxtaposition with other issues such as the “headscarf debate” and the “Kurdish question” according to their own interests. With this way, women’s movement in Turkey is marginalized and delegitimized. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: March 8 demonstrations; newspapers; women’s movement; Turkey. * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +903722574010 – 1549. E-mail address: atikbarut@hotmail.com
- 63. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 49 1. Introduction March 8 Demonstrations are the most popular form of women’s movement in Turkey as most of the feminist and LGBTI organizations take part in the demonstrations and as they represent what “women’s movement” and “feminism” are for the general public. Hence, the coverage of women’s demonstrations by the newspapers shapes the attitudes of many people about women’s movements and feminists; so it might have an effect on the future mobilization of women’s movement in Turkey. In this paper, we examine the way March 8 Demonstrations on the International Women’s Day is presented in three newspapers in Turkey, namely Yeni Şafak, Hürriyet and Radikal, after the neo- conservative Justice and Development Party (JDP) came into power in 2002. We mainly argue that (1) the newspapers report mostly events and activities when they report about the Women’s Day since there is an “eventization” process of March 8 Demonstrations in Turkey and that (2) the newspapers tend to focus on the “event” aspect of March 8 Demonstrations rather than putting emphasis on gender and women related issues and problems. Before supporting our claims, we will briefly mention the gender inequality problem in Turkey after 2002 and the role of media on the presentation of March 8 Demonstrations. Then, we will show the findings of our content analysis with the examples from different news. In this study, we use “event” and “eventization” of women’s movement as our operational concepts. Firstly, we see that the International Women’s Day in Turkey is dominated by a series of events organized by different local/national and political/non-governmental agents more than demonstrations or marches. We call this process “eventization” of March 8. The reflection of this phenomenon is clearly observed in the news about International Women’s Day. Secondly, focusing on the news about demonstrations, we argue that all three newspapers highlight the “event” aspect of March 8 Demonstrations. Here the meaning of “event” is twofold. The first meaning of event in our analysis is “activity”. The activities performed by the demonstrators such as street theater performances, dances, singing etc. are all referred as events. The second meaning of event we use is “juxtaposition of the March 8 demonstrations with the demonstrations of political parties associated with the Kurdish movement and demonstrations for and against headscarf”. We borrow this second meaning from Ashley and Olson (1998) that used the notion of “event” as one of the coding categories in their analyses of print media’s framing of women’s movement in the USA between the years 1966-1986. Ashley and Olson state that “an event is considered more important than issues when the press ignores the goals and mission of the group; describes the group's actions (marched, harassed, etc.); and when superficial details (weather, number of bystanders watching, etc.) are emphasized” (1998: 265). In line with their argument, we claim that by highlighting the events (both activities and the incidences/juxtapositions with other social issues) more than women’s concerns and demands regarding women’s rights, equality and liberation, the newspapers trivialize March 8 demonstrations and defocus the aims of women’s movement. 2. Gender inequality problem of Turkey after 2002 As a strong patriarchal society, gender inequality has been a permanent problem in Turkey. However, after JDP came into power, gender inequality started deepening because of JDP’s neo-conservative attitudes and policies. JDP implements its conservative politics at the national level under neo-liberalism. The current situation of gender inequality in contemporary Turkey can be examined by a reference to the intersection of “moral-political rationality” and “market-political rationality” of JDP government (Acar & Altunok 2013).
- 64. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 50 The JDP government plays a crucial role in perpetuating the norms of the traditional patriarchal society by promoting unequal gender roles. According to Coşar and Yeğenoğlu, “JDP’s neoliberal-conservative version of patriarchy is familiar, for it defines the familial sphere as the natural locus of women” (2011: 567). During the 13 years between 2002 and 2015, especially during the recent years, we see many examples which show the attitude and policies of JDP government regarding women’s status in the society. First of all, JDP supports women only as mothers and wives in the context of the institution of family. “This was also reflected in the change of the name of the Ministry for Women and Family to the Ministry of Family and Social Policy” (Alemdar 2013: 145). There is also an aim to control women’s body for the same reason. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then head of the JDP, “explained his opposition not just to abortion but also to caesareans, triggering vigorous discussion” (Aydemir 2013: 48). We also witnessed that he “congratulated the newlyweds in the wedding ceremonies in which he participates and to ask the bride to promise that the union will produce ‘at least three’ children” (Acar & Altunok 2013: 16). In short, both in the discourses and in the policies of the JDP government, we can clearly see the unequal attitude to genders in Turkey. On the other hand, we cannot say that nothing has changed about gender inequality during the rule of JDP government. Strong impact of the feminist movement in Turkey on the positive developments in the status of women cannot be rejected although JDP tries to regulate these changes compatible to its own interests. For example, according to Narlı, “the gravity of its religiously conservative grassroots occasionally urge the AKP to push ‘customary and patriarchal moral’ values to satisfy those resisting change in the status of women” (2006: 118). This is because JDP sees the power of women as a threat for its neo-conservative politics. However, feminists raise their voices with each passing day, and sometimes JDP has no option other than turning a blind eye to them. Today, it is also argued that JDP controls some of the media groups and they cannot act freely because of the pressure and threat they feel on their journalistic actions. As a result, the ideas of the opposition are usually not heard as strong as those in power. The way of representing the news in the media cannot be neutral anymore, and this also counts for March 8 Demonstrations. In this sense, it is important to note that the news we examined are under the influence of the stress and impact of a specific ideology. 5. March 8 Demonstrations in Turkey and the role of media Especially in recent years, March 8 Demonstrations have been one of the most important activities in the agendas of different organizations and groups in Turkey. The role of feminist movement which is more effective after 1980s and also more active in academic arena on these demonstrations cannot be ignored. According to Yeşilyurt Gündüz (2004), we can divide the Turkish women’s movement into three phases. “The first phase began in 1839 with the wide-spectrum of laws in the Tanzimat period. The Ottoman Empire started a reform policy, which also influenced women. Considering that the European women’s movement started with the French Revolution in 1789, this was a delay of about half a century. The second phase began with the Republican era, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk granting women certain rights. The third phase dates from the end of the military intervention in 1980 and was initiated by Turkish women themselves”. During the years before 1980s, women and supporting groups had taken part in demonstrations at March 8 irregularly and not as masses, yet, after the 1980s (with the effects of International Women’s Year of the UN in 1975 and after negative impacts of the military intervention in 1980), March 8 Demonstrations and events have started to be organized every year on the streets by different women and LGBTI organizations, political groups and independent participants as International Working Women’s Day.
- 65. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 51 As number and impact of the demonstrations have increased during the years, role of the media about the representation of March 8 has also become stronger. However, it does not mean that the media always supports the movement in their news. The role of media on the representation of International Women’s Day Demonstrations is significant because it affects many people’s point of view about what women’s movement is, why they demonstrate, and who they are. During the week of March 8 in each year, we see a series of news about demonstrations on media and as stated above they are not free of the hegemonic ideology of the neo-conservative Islamist party in power. As Durna states “news are, above all, the reproduction of interpretation practices in social sphere. The role of dominant ideology on this interpretative production is crucial” (2014: 249). Social movements, demonstrations and protests are also reported by the news media under the influence of the hegemonic power. Ashley and Olson describe how news media frames social protests as follows: “news media can frame a protest group in several ways: by ignoring it; burying the article in the back section; by the description given to the protesters; reporting the events rather than the group's goals and interests; trivializing the protest by making light of their dress, language, age, style, or goals; or marginalizing viewpoints by attributing them to a social deviant" (1998: 264). Hence, it is possible to speak of the inevitable existence of ideological attitude in the approach of newspapers for their way of representing the reality, and the news about March 8 is no exception. As Kurtoğlu says, “how the history is written or how the story is told affects how we see women, feminists, women’s movement, March 8 and people who celebrate it” (2015: 79). 6. International Women’s Day Demonstrations in newspapers In order to examine the media coverage of International Women’s Day Demonstrations in Turkey after 2002, when JDP came into power, we conducted content analysis of three newspapers: Hürriyet (mainstream newspaper of the most powerful media group); Yeni Şafak (neo-conservative and Islamist newspaper) and Radikal (which lost its oppositional character by time and became an internet-only newspaper in 2014). We aimed to analyze how March 8 Demonstrations in Turkey were covered during JDP rule: whether they are totally ignored; trivialized by focusing on the entertainment side of them or given wide coverage to raise awareness to women’s issues. We made archive research on internet sites of the newspapers, searched with the keywords “International Women’s Day” and “March 8” and we reached 657 news about International Women’s Day in total. When we look at the news about International Women’s Day, we see that the news articles can be grouped under four headings: demonstrations, events, political messages and commercial news. Other than these categories, there are also general news articles about the meaning of the International Women’s Day, the status and “success stories/tragedies” of women in Turkey. As it is seen in Table 1, most of the news articles report events organized within the context of the International Women’s Day throughout the years we examined. Nevertheless, there are two exceptions to this. In 2005, there are more news articles reporting “demonstrations” than “events”. This is because that year the police disrupted the March 8 Demonstration in İstanbul violently and this incident had broad repercussions in the EU and international press. In 2008, the percentages of “demonstrations” and “events” are close to each other. The reason is that in 2008 there was strong opposition by secularist groups to the public use of the headscarf and the March 8 Demonstrations were dominated by protests against headscarf and Islamism, as a continuation of the secularist “Republic Protests” of 2007 against Islamic rule in Turkey. After we have categorized the news under four headings, we mainly analysed the news which covered the March 8 Demonstrations and March 8 events. In what follows, we describe the characteristics of the
- 66. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 52 news articles in the remaining two categories, namely political messages and commercial news. Then, in the following section, we present the results of our major analysis. Table 1. Percentages of news according to years and contents Some of the news articles refer to the messages given by political leaders about women, importance of women for the society and women’s problems. Some politicians turn their messages into an opportunity to promote themselves, their parties and political ideologies. The best example to this is then Prime Minister Erdoğan’s speech on March 8, 2008 about his request from Turkish women to produce “at least three children”. The newspapers allocate wide space specifically to Erdoğan’s speeches, especially Yeni Şafak and Radikal. Leaders give their messages via speeches during an event organized for the International Women’s Day or they send their March 8 messages through their Office of Press Relations. Hence, it was a methodological problem for us whether to put some news under the category of events or political messages. We solved this problem by putting the news articles which mainly report the message under the category of the political messages. We also see that many people, firms and brands regard the International Women’s Day as one of those “special days” like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day on which women are given presents or taken out for dinner. Thus, there are also commercial news articles about March 8. It is important to note that these are commercial news, not direct advertisements. The commercialization of March 8 is criticized by Kurtoğlu as follows: “March 8 is equalized with Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day through commercial instrumentalizations and instead of doing something for women; money is made from and by means of women” (2015: 80). This is a phenomenon we encounter after 2005 in the newspapers we examined. “Special discount for women on International Women’s Day” is a commonly referred phrase in this type of commercial news articles which include jewelry, shopping malls, restaurants, automobiles, and electronical equipment. Looking at these varied groups of products and commodities, we can say that the firms try to turn March 8 into a profitable special day for themselves like the other special days mentioned above. 6.1. “Eventization” of the International Women’s Day The unequal frequency distribution of March 8 news articles according to the four categories and newspapers is noteworthy. As it is shown in Figure 1, the three newspapers which we analyzed covered 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Demonstration 17,6 15,8 44,4 30,0 29,8 36,5 31,8 22,2 26,5 13,0 19,3 11,9 13,9 Event 64,7 57,9 18,5 35,0 48,9 39,7 54,5 60,0 55,1 69,6 63,2 69,0 71,5 Politics 17,6 26,3 29,6 25,0 19,1 19,0 6,8 13,3 12,2 13,0 10,5 14,3 10,8 Commercial 0,0 0,0 7,4 10,0 2,1 4,8 6,8 4,4 6,1 4,3 7,0 4,8 3,8 Total 17 19 27 20 47 63 44 45 49 69 57 42 158
- 67. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 53 International Women’s Day events more than demonstrations. For the purposes of our paper, this is a significant finding since we claim that newspapers report March 8 activities as events instead of an important aspect of women’s movement. It is also remarkable that March 8 events and demonstrations are organized not only on the 8th of March but dispersed to a whole week, and sometimes to a whole month. This fact is a part of the eventization process, too. During this whole week or month, a series of events including panels, seminars, exhibitions, concerts, receptions, and even women’s matinee are organized. Distribution of flowers, especially cloves, to women during these events has almost become a tradition. Some of the events are just this act of “distributing cloves” to women. While the organizers of the events range from NGOs, political parties, religious offices and municipalities, to shopping malls, chambers, associations and universities, the demonstrations are usually organized by women’s groups, leftist political parties and Kemalist women. Fig. 1. Frequency distribution of news according to newspapers and contents It is important to show that newspaper give wide coverage to news about International Women’s Day events. Nonetheless, our objective is to point out the newspapers’ emphasis on the “event” aspect of “demonstrations”. We will elaborate on the features of these demonstrations in a detailed analysis in the following part. 6.2. Event as activity: Celebrating the March 8 One of our main arguments is that the newspapers highlight the activities performed during the marches more than the words/claims of women while reporting March 8 Demonstrations. We found out that most of the news about International Women’s Day Demonstrations in Turkey contained one or two sentences about the content of the speech given. The rest of the articles included detailed about the organizers of the demonstrations, the numbers of demonstrators, what women wear, whether they accept men in the demonstrations or not and what women did. The coverage of what women did during the demonstrations by the newspapers is especially significant for our analysis since nearly all of the newspapers covered demonstrations as “celebration”. One of the news articles of Hürriyet from 2011 exemplifies the activity aspect of the demonstrations: “On March 8 Yeni Şafak Radikal Hürriyet 8 47 90 29 73 284 12 25 58 11 3 17 Demonstration Event Politics Commercial
- 68. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 54 International Women’s Day, different NGOs organized demonstrations in İzmir, Manisa and Datça with flambeaus, whistles and pantomime performances. Enhancement of women’s rights was demanded”. Other examples which include “colorful images/activities”, “women banging pots and pans” and “using color purple” support the argument that the newspapers emphasize the event aspect of Women’s Day marches. The emphasis of the news on women’s “celebrating actions” is apparent by the frequent use of words like songs, concerts, halay (traditional folk dance), festival, sky lantern, flowers etc. in the news. We have seen a lot of news from the three newspapers we analyzed which ends with this cliché sentence: “after the speeches given, women danced the halay with a flourish of trumpets”. Although these news are direct reports of the March 8 Demonstrations, the emphasis on their entertainment aspect may lead to a decrease in the importance of the International Women’s Day. Some of the feminist groups reject the argument that the March 8 is a day to be celebrated by women during the demonstrations. An example to this point can be given from 2013 March 8 Demonstrations in Bodrum. According to the news of Radikal, that year the march which was supposed to take place at the city square near a mosque was precluded by the imam. One of the woman demonstrators reacted to the common sense idea about March 8 as celebration: “We won’t belly dance here. We don’t celebrate and also don’t expose anything. … We saw today that we are faced with men’s hegemony once again” (Radikal 2013). There is also a prominent difference between the way March 8 Demonstrations organized in Eastern/South-eastern regions and Western provinces of Turkey are reported by the newspapers. In the Western provinces, the news articles highlight entertainment side of the demonstrations with words like “concerts”, “theaters”, and “whistles” and/or stress the presence of secular activities during the demonstrations mostly related to the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. On the other hand, news articles describing the demonstrations in the Eastern/South-eastern provinces underline the local features which the demonstrators embody into their marches. For instance, phrases like “women in colorful local outfits”, “concerts given by local performers”, “folk songs in Kurdish”, “women ululating and playing the frame drum” are frequently used in the articles. This phenomenon is closely related to our third argument which is newspapers’ defocusing of the meaning of the International Women’s Day by associating the March 8 Demonstrations to other social issues. 6.3. Event as juxtaposition: Ethnicity and religion of March 8 Another finding of our newspaper analysis is that the content of the March 8 Demonstrations changes according to the general political and social agenda of the country. The recent years witness the dominance of the topic violence against women during March 8 Demonstrations whereas the focus of the demonstrations were peace, honor killings and headscarf issue in the previous years. The juxtaposition of women’s issues with the political agenda of the country displays a complex picture of March 8 Demonstrations in Turkey. How they are reported by certain newspapers further complicates the phenomenon since we argue that March 8 Demonstrations are delegitimized and defocused by this juxtaposition of the demonstrations with Kurdish movement and headscarf issue. Firstly, it is seen in the newspapers that if the demonstrations take place in the Eastern or South-eastern parts of Turkey, the news articles turn into reports about the Kurdish issue instead of Women’s Day. “Terror”, “HDP/BDP/DTP” (political parties related basically to the Kurdish movement), “Kurdish flag”, “posters of Apo” (Kurdish leader), “slogans”, “PKK” (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), “resolution process”, “Kurdish women”, “Nowruz” etc. are the words brought into the forefront in the news about the International Women’s Day Demonstrations. In the news about March 8 Demonstrations in the Eastern
- 69. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 55 and/or South-eastern regions, the language becomes harsh and anti-Kurdish from time to time. For example, the news from Hürriyet in 2008, “Provocation with terrorist’s outfit” was used as the title to describe the women who attended the March 8 Demonstrations in Hakkari. In fact, the news articles on March 8 Demonstrations which are juxtaposed with the Kurdish issue focus on women’s issues more than other news articles which solely report the demonstrations. In our opinion, this may result from the fact that women’s issues such as women’s status within the society are one of the keystones of the Kurdish leftist ideology and movement. Secondly, some of the news articles, especially in 2007 and 2008, put headscarf debate and March 8 Demonstrations together. In these news articles, newspapers presented the International Women’s Day without mentioning the movement. For example, Yeni Şafak used the title “Shame of the women of RPP (Republican People’s Party, main secularist opposition party in contemporary Turkey) on Women’s Day” for an incident in Denizli. This article criticized RPP’s women because of their discriminatory attitude towards women with headscarf. According to the news, one of the women from RPP group provoked the demonstration by not letting the woman place the wreath on the monument. The woman from RPP justified her act on the grounds that a woman with headscarf cannot place a wreath on Atatürk’s monument and that it is a challenge to secularism. (Yeni Şafak, 2007). This approach of the newspapers to the reporting of March 8 Demonstrations is closely associated with the secularism-Islamism conflict being fueled by the policies of JDP which takes advantage of the headscarf issue as a political gain. This close association is apparent when the news on March 8 Demonstrations after 2013 are analyzed. The juxtaposition of March 8 Demonstrations with headscarf issue fades away after the ban on the use of headscarf in public institutions was lifted in 2013. 7. Conclusion In this paper, we argued that the International Women’s Day Demonstrations are usually represented in the newspapers not as a part of women’s movement in which agents upper their voices against women’s problems, but as events which hide the major aims of March 8. Not only the number of news articles which cover the International Women’s Day events is more than the news articles which cover demonstrations, but also most of the news about demonstrations highlight the event aspect of them by defining the demonstrations as celebration or by reporting the demonstration in juxtaposition with other social issues like the Kurdish movement and the headscarf debate. Therefore, it becomes possible to talk about “eventization” of the International Women’s Day and hence marginalization and delegitimization of the Women’s Movement in Turkey by the media. References Acar, F. & Altunok, G. (2013). “The ‘politics of intimate’ at the intersection of neo-liberalism and neo- conservatism in contemporary Turkey”, Women’s Studies International Forum 41, 14-23. Alemdar, Z. (2013). “TPQ Seminar Review: Women’s Rights and LGBT Freedoms in Turkey – Progressing or Regressing?” Turkish Policy 12:3, 143-152. Ashley, L. & Olson, B. (1998). Constructing reality: Print media's framing of the women's movement, 1966 to 1986. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 75(2), 263-277.
- 70. Atilla Barutçu andFigen Uzar Özdemir / METU GWS CONFERENCE 2015 Page | 56 Aydemir, S. G. (2013). “Turkish Women in Politics, the Economy and Society”, KAS International Reports (3), 48-74. Coşar, S. & Yeğenoğlu, M. (2011). “New Grounds for Patriarchy in Turkey? Gender Policy in the Age of AKP”, South European Society and Politics16:4, 555-573. Durna, T. (2014). “70’li Yıllarda Politik Şiddet ve Basın”, Modernizmin Yansımaları: 70’li Yıllarda Türkiye, Ed. R. Funda Barbaros ve Erik Jan Zurcher, Efil Yayınevi, pp. 230-268. İnceoğlu, Y. & Çoban, S. (2014). “Giriş”, Azınlıklar, Ötekiler ve Medya. Ed. Yasemin İnceoğlu& Savaş Çoban, Ayrıntı Yayınları, pp. 7-10. Kaplan T. (1985). “On the Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day”, Feminist Studies 11, No. 1, pp. 163-171. Kurtoğlu, A. (2015). “8 Mart Dünya Kadınlar Günü hakkında kısa bir hikâye”, Fe Dergi 7, no. 1, 78-85. Narli, N. (2006). Pro-Islamic Parties, Gender and Social Class in Turkey. Quaderns de la Mediterrània=Cuadernosdel Mediterráneo, (7), 111-118. Yeşilyurt Gündüz, Z. (2004). “The Women’s Movement in Turkey: From Tanzimat towards European Union Membership”, Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, 9(3), 113-134. Cited newspapers Bodrum’da ‘cami yanında 8 Mart eylemi olmaz’ tartışması, (08.03.2013), Radikal. Retrieved from http://www.Radikal.com.tr/turkiye/bodrumda_cami_yaninda_8_mart_eylemi_olmaz_tartismasi-1124363 Hakkari’de terörist elbiseli tahrik, (08.03.2008), Hürriyet. Retrieved from http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/hakkaride-terorist-elbiseli-tahrik-8408254 Kadınlarda düdüklü meşaleli protesto, (10.03.2011), Hürriyet. Retrieved from http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ege/17228701.asp Kadınlar Günü’nde CHP’li kadınlardan kadına karşı ayıp, (09.03.2007), Yeni Şafak. Retrieved from http://www.yenisafak.com/gundem/kadinlar-gununde-chpli-kadinlardan-kadina-karsi-ayip-33919
- 71. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 57 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Gender Perspective in Electronic Governance Initiative in India: Use of ICT for Women Empowerment Avneet Kaur* University of Delhi, India Abstract This paper is intended to highlight the role of electronic governance in empowering women by taking into account the case studies of electronic governance projects of India. One reason for studying this aspect was that women in India have been socially and economically handicapped on the account of their degraded status.It is observed that they have not been able to participate in social, political and economic activities of the state. The concern for gender equity is a crucial issue for developing countries like India. After the period of the 1990s, neoliberal ideology has an impact on the economies of the world. The emergence of markets, free trade, disinvestment and new forms of communication and technology were visible at the global scale. One of the major transformation brought by globalisation was the introduction of Information Communication Technology or electronic -governance. Electronic-governance is one of the medium for bringing efficiency, transparency and accountability in the administrative system. Due to the patriarchal structure, women have been negated their right to desire equal benefits from the government schemes. Patriarchy has been a critical issue for a male-centric administration and gender-based technocratic divide. The first section introduces the concern for gender equity by discussing some of theoretical background of the study. The second section highlights the historical roots of discrimination faced by Indian women. Then paper further discusses the electronic governance initiatives by the Indian government to empower women. Further, the third section examines the weaknesses of the electronic governance projects with some of the critical insights. The paper concludes with policy suggestion and comments. ©2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Electronic governance; women empowerment; India; information and communication technology (ICT) * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +919811585719 E-mail address: avnetkaur@gmail.com
- 72. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 58 1. Introduction In the last few decades, it is observed that there have been acceleration and spread of new modern technologies particularly Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) throughout the world. Many academician and scholars have raised many important questions in this particular context. Some of the critical concerns are: Can the use of ICT transform the lives of women? Is it a viable option for empowering women folks by providing them employment opportunities? Is ICT a tool for reducing the digital divide that exists between men and women? These are some of the important concerns that are significant to understand the benefits of this new technological innovation. Emmanuel C. Lallana (2012) in his overview has highlighted the role of government in framing the ICTs policies for development. This study focused on eight projects being undertaken by Pan Asia Network for e-governance. This book highlights the fact that ICT can help ASEAN achieve its goal of becoming an inclusive institution of regional governance. Ian Rowlands (1996) points out that ICT policy can be categorized into three categories: a. Infrastructural: It deals with the development of national infrastructure required for implementation of ICT. b. Vertical: It addresses the basic needs that are related to the sectors of education, health and industry. c. Horizontal: It covers broader aspects of society such as freedom of information, privacy and security Virtually every component of each of these categories can affect the majority of women differently. N. Primo (2003) argues that the empowerment of women is closely connected to socio-economic development that leads to social transformation that demands the equality for everyone in access to the use of ICTs. In relation to women, this kind of inequality is called “gender digital divide”. It has been observed that women all over the world use ICTs to a lesser extent. They especially highlighted the experience of global south that had faced many challenges in the use of such technologies. The reason for such challenges is the prevailing social institution and processes that have marginalised women in terms of their technological usage and their progress. To understand the significance of ICTs in the lives of women, it is important to note the availability and access of technologies to poor and disadvantages sections of society. It is important to analyse the implications of new technology i.e. ICTs in improving the lives of women. Before discussing its implication, it is important to highlight some of roots causes of gender inequality prevalent in Indian society. 2. Historical roots of gender inequality Women studies have moved from being a vagueextra-disciplinary status to an interdisciplinary subject. The reason for this shift has been a convention that is held by the sociologist that women in human society are relegated to an inferior position. It is evident from the available literature that in early vedic society, women occupied the same position as that of man but in the later phases their condition deteriorated. They were considered to be an object and a source of entertainment, hence assigning them an inferior status in Indian society. Jasodha Bagchi (1991) through her work tries to explain the origin of the obnoxious practice. She was of the opinion that after Aryans adopted the agriculture mode of life and started settling in India, the bulk of the productive labour fell on the men folk. Women were assigned to play the role of house maker who has to fulfil all domestic responsibilities. The entire society only existed for women. Women
- 73. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 59 had no education, had no opportunity for economicself-sufficiency. In the opinion of Anjali Bhave (1995), the origin of Varna system was based upon the four-fold of classification: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. In all earlier studies on villages in India, one wonders if women were important to village structures. From Vedic period up till now, the ideal women are portrayed as home loving, caring, welfare of children and husband and even sacrificing figure. It has been accepted fact that the ancient text such as Manusmriti and Rig Veda also assigned women an inferior status. In the colonial period, practices such as child marriage, Sati system, caste-based discrimination were prevalent. Many Indian social reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Jyotibha Phule and Swami Dayananda enacted several laws to improve the conditions of women. In independent India, the government took many steps to empower and uplift women by introducing many social and economic programmes such as Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women (STEP), National Mission for the Empowerment of Women, Rashtriya MahilaKosh, Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) and Conditional Maternity Benefit (CMB) scheme. Even in the Constitution of India, the principle of gender equality is reflected in the ideology of fundamental rights and Directive Principles of State Policy. There are many factors that discriminates women in a social structure such as financial dependence on male, weaker position in society, preference of male child, discrimination at workplaces, caste, class, deprivation of nourishment and health care facilities. One of the cause of their discrimination is entrenched in the concept of patriarchal norms and value that subordinated women to male. Nelly P. Stromquist (1998) has provided a suitable answer to “What is patriarchy?” he was of the opinion that patriarchy is a historical system of the dominance of man over women. Noam Chomsky (1986) in his book “Liberating Theory” has written about this subject by analysing patriarchy or male dominance has been an important feature of kinship systems. According to the United Nation Development Declaration on Elimination of Violence against women reported that women are the sufferers of all kinds of discrimination. In the book “Women in Third World” (1998) defined violence as an act of gender-based violence that results in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women. Some of the results of violence are sexual abuse of female children, dowry- related deaths, rape, female infanticide and foeticide, violence related to exploitation and sexual harassment, forced prostitution and violence condoned by the state. 3. Women empowerment Empowerment is the process that enables an individual to work and think in an independent manner. It is the process by which one gains control over one’s destiny and circumstances of their lives. Most writers on ‘empowerment’ or women empowerment emphasize a change in power relations that exist between men and women. According to S.L Sharma (2000), the empowerment of women leads to the equal status with that of men. He was of the opinion that it was imperative that women are provided with social, political or economic opportunities then only can they be empowered. Sunita Chugh (2004) says that the process of empowerment gives women power and authority to influence the bodies of the governance process. According to her, men and women are equal in the context of their participation in the political system. As per the United National Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the term women empowerment means (Y Pardhasaradhi and V. Nagender Rao, 2014): a. Acquiring knowledge and understanding of gender relations and the ways in which these relations may be changed.
- 74. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 60 b. Developing a sense of self-worth, a belief in one’s ability to secure desired changes and the right to control their life. c. Gaining the ability to generate choices to exercise bargaining power. d. Developing the ability to organise and influence the direction of social change, to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally. Empowerment enables women to define their attitudes, values and behaviorin relation to their real interests. They will have autonomy because they can claim their freedom from existing male power hierarchies (Neeta Tapan, 2000). Education increases the economic, social and political opportunities available to women. It leads to direct economic benefits in the form of higher lifetime earnings for women. Investments in female education start a virtuous cycle that leads to improved levels of income, growth and gender equality. Access to health and employment, participation in the political process and decision- making right from the grassroots level are the other areas where empowerment is to be achieved (Deepa, Narayan 2005). 4. Electronic governance and women empowerment ICT is an important tool to improve governance by bringing transparency and accountability in the working of government institutions. It is also an important medium through which people become aware of their rights and responsibilities as a citizen of the country. There are various advantages of the use of ICT or electronic governance such as it strengthen democracy, eliminate poverty, minimise the role of bureaucracy and empowers minorities and women. In contemporary times, the government has implemented many electronic governance programmes at national and state level. Apart from providing online government services to the common masses such as information regarding birth certificates, death certificates, registration of complaints, government schemes or any other matter. The gender-responsive governance means active involvement of women at all levels to ensure their recognition and dignity in the political system. Through the use of ICT, women become self-independent and can participate in the decision-making processes of the government institutions. Women empowerment is related to the control of power that can shape the way they want to live their lives. Women have the power to access resources and to take their independent decisions. It can be argued that ICT can be a powerful medium through which economic, political and social empowerment of women is possible leading to the promotion of gender equality. Although government have taken important steps to empower women by providing them economic opportunities by initiating many social and economic programmes. Some of the important e-governance programme are National e- Governance Plan (NeGP) and Common Service Centres (CSCs). 4.1. Enabling women’s economic empowerment The UN commission on status of women commented that women who constitute half of world‟s population, performs two third of world’s work, receive one-tenth of its income and owns less than hundredth of its property. Women represent three-quarters of heads of households in developing nations and for every one woman in poverty there are four dependent children (UNICEF, 2004). According to the report, women are the poorest of the world's poor, representing 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people who live in absolute poverty (Data and Statistics, 2001). Nearly 900 million women have incomes of less than one dollar per day (UNESCO, 2001). All these reports give an impression that the cause of their deprivation is related to the existing poverty in the country. ICT provides an enabling potential to improve women’s
- 75. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 61 lives. The use of technology is beneficial by providing women access to widemarkets,connecting them through social networks and giving them opporunity to explore new means of economical enhancement through the use of electronic means. In Gujarat (India), women dairy producers use the Dairy Information System Kiosk (DISK), which manages a database of all milk cattle and provides information about veterinary services and other practical information about the dairy sector. In Madhya Pradesh, Gyandoot project are operative wherelow-income families are using knowledge centres for resolution of their economic and social problems. In this project, women have been using these Information technologies to make their lives easier and comfortable (Balaji 2001; Kanungo, 2002). They have used online government services related to income certificate, domicile certificate, caste certificate and public grievance redressal. 4.2. Social empowerment In terms of social context, women in India are still tradition-bound and are in a disadvantageous position. A nation that wants to progress cannot afford to ignore capacity building and empowerment of women. ICT provides opportunities for women’s socio-economic empowerment in many areas, including in health and education. Azim PremjiFoundation is a Non Government Organisation that has taken many steps to educate public through information technology. Initiatives that focus on educating women in poor communities and teaching them computer literacy have demonstrated the value of ICT for women. A study of nine projects with a specific focus on women and youth in South Asia showed that ICT use is valued for providing a different model of teaching and learning which is practical and hands-on. New ICT also allow the process and content of education to be adapted to learner preferences and priorities, thus opening up possibilities for designing and providing education in forms that are locally relevant (Don Slater, 2004).The use of ICT by health practitioners in developing countries is quite well established.Examples of some projects are SEWA (Self Employed Women Organisation) and Organizations such as Satellife102 and HealthNet103 are examples of projects that have been successful in providing health information and connections to developing country health professionals (Huyer Sophia and Sikoska, 2003). These kinds of projects exemplify the contribution of ICT in improving health conditions of women in developing countries. 4.3. Political empowerment The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles (Surendra Nath Mishra, 2004). The Constitution not only grants equality to women, but also empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women. In recent years, the empowerment of women has been recognized as the central issue in determining the status of women. The National Commission for Women was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1990 to safeguard the rights and legal entitlements of women (Rajkumar Singh, 2011). The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution provided for reservation of seats in the local bodies of Panchayats and Municipalities for women. It laid a strong foundation for their participation in the decision- making process at the local levels (Prem R Bhardwaj, 2005). In recent years, e-governance has become a priority area of many governments resulting in the implementation of programmes that apply ICT in delivering government services and promoting transparency and accountability.
- 76. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 62 5. Gender supported electronic governance projects in India a. Self Employed Women Association (SEWA): This project operates in Gujarat. The aim of the project is to empower women by providing them economic opportunities by using information Technology. b. Gyandoot: This projective is operative in Madhya Pradesh that connects many rural panchayats. This portal provided information to women about different projects on agriculture and rural life. c. Smile (Savitri Marketing Institution for Ladies Empowerment): This is an organisation that works at Pune. This project led to the increase in literacy rate of females by using internet and computers. Women sold many products like handmadestuff, books, bags online leading to their global exposure. d. Aamagaon Soochna Kendra: This project started by the government of Odisha, which have organised around 73 Information technology centres in rural areas that are operated by women representatives. The women are provided training through workshops conducted by the government to educate them about theimportance of ICT for their empowerment. e. Janani: This is another important e-governance program that provides health-related information to women. It has benefitted many rural pregnant women by providing them necessary help and information through the online endeavour. The government of India has launched a number of schemes for women empowerment using ICT. Some of them are listed in Table 1. Table 1: Scheme for Women Empowerment Using ICT S.NO Name of Department Name of the Scheme Purpose of the Scheme 1 MHRD ICT in School Provide opportunities to secondary stage students to develop ICT skills& ICT learning process. 2 MHRD Central scheme to provide Internet Subsidy Provide Internet subsidy during the period of Moratorium. 3 Department of Telecommunication Sanchar Shanti A suite of Mobile Value Added Service (VAS) to provide a variety of useful information to women & other schemes. 4 MHRD Sakshar Bharat Provide & strengthen Adult education especially women. 5 India NGO IT Mahiti Manthana Empower rural women through ICT Source: www.mhrd.org 6. Critical Review The above discussions are based on the positive aspect of ICT in empowering women. This section deals with some of the critical insight of the projects and their implication on women. Some of the important factors that create barriers for women to use the technology for their empowerment are: a. Literacy: In India, the majority of the women living in rural areas are illiterate. According to the 2011 Census, the male literacy rate is 82.14 while female literacy rate is 65.46 only. This wide gap between male and women has been a barrier for having command over the knowledge of information and Communication Technology.
- 77. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 63 b. Computer Literacy: It is observed that majority of women are not given proper training to learn computers because of the patriarchal setup that is entrenched in Indian society. c. Social Cultural Aspects: Historically women have faced discrimination in their social and cultural life. In India, preference is given to the male child.The boys have access to education as well as technology. The girl is expected to fulfil all household responsibility. Girls are not provided proper facilities and respect in their home. They work as bonded labour in their homes and hence rearing and taking care of children also falls on her shoulder. They are not given any opportunity to learn and, therefore, they are negated from the access to ICT. d. Time Deprivation and Mobility: There are certain time constraints in terms of the work they do and they are dependent on their male members regarding their decision to move from one place to other. e. Patriarchy: Indian society is patriarchal in nature. Women are economically, socially and physically dependent upon the males to fulfil their basic needs. Hence even if they want to learn computers or mobiles, they have to take permission from male members. f. Language: It is a major barrier in terms of the empowerment process. India is a land of many languages. Different states have their regioanal language. Educating people through a common language becomes a complex task. Internet learning is only possible through the medium of English that is not understood by the larger population. Hence, communication through different languages becomes a complex task. g. Gender and caste-based discrimination: In terms of the use of technology there has been a prevalent digital divide that exist between male and female. In rural areas, it has been observed that the women from lower casteare not allowed accessibility in terms of learning or using computers. h. Insufficient advancement facilities and Powerlessness: There is a lack of infrastructure facilities like computers and power that also create a barrier of using internet technology. i. Lack of information on e-governance projects: Many times women are not aware of the government-run electronic governance project that negates their opportunity to make use of ICT for their empowerment. 7. Policy Suggestions and Conclusion It is observed from the historical experiences of women studies that women have been discriminated in terms of their acceptability of their identity in society. The Sati system, purdah system, child marriage, rape, female infanticide, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, domestic violence, sexual and physical harassment are the cause of subordination of women in Indian society. The use of ICT for women is an important medium through which empowerment of women is possible. Although it has both negative as well as positive implications. Experiences from the developed and developing countries highlight the fact that the use of ICT has led to the improvement in the life of women by providing them the opportunity for economic, political and social empowerment. In India, the government have taken important steps at national and state level to empower women. Electronic governance projects such as Gyandoot, FRIENDS, SEWA, and Janani are operating in different states of India. Although some of the projects and schemes were beneficial for empowering women. The policies and programme should be formulated in such a manner that takes into account best practices of ICT in promoting gender equality. The government should conduct regular workshops in rural areas for spreading awareness relating to the benefits of ICT for women. It should also provide financial assistance to rural e-governance projects for setting up infrastructure required for the accessibility of ICT by rural masses. There is a need to devise such policies that can benefit women from all segments of society. Gender
- 78. Avneet Kaur /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 64 analysis becomes an important issue for the policy formulation. It becomes significant that women should understand the importance and implication of ICT in their life. Only women reliasation of its advantage leads to social, economic and political empowerment of women. Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to all my friends and well-wishers who have encouraged me to write this paper. References Aggarwal, Sushila (1988). Status of Women, Printwell Publication: Jaipur. Bagchi, Jasodha, (ed.) (1995). Indian Women: Myth and Reality, Sangam Books: New Delhi. Balakrishnan, S. & Ramnathan R. (2000).State of the Art as Art of the State: Evaluating E-Governance Initiatives through Citizen Feedback, Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore. Banerjee, Nirmala (1991). Indian Women in a Changing Industrial Scenario, Sage: New Delhi. Bhatnagar S. (2000). Social Implications of Information Communication Technology in Developing Countries: Lessons from Asian Success Stories, The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, 3, 7, 1-15, Ref: http://www.is.city.edu.hk/research/ejisdc/vol1/v1r4.pdf. Best, L. & Maier, S. G. (2007). Gender, Culture and ICT Use in Rural South India, Gender, Technology and Development, Vol.11, No.2, pp. 137-155. Bhave, Anjali (1995). Of Women Caste: The Experience in Rural India, Stree Publication: Calcutta. Bhardwaj, Prem R (2005). Gender Discrimination: The Politics of Women Empowerment, Anamika Publishers: New Delhi, pp.61-67. Boserup Ester (1970). Women’s Role in Economic Development, St.Martin’s Press: New York. Chomsky Noam (1986). Liberating Theory, Sound End Press: Boston. Chugh, Sunita (2004). ICT and Women Empowerment: Barriers and Opportunities, MadhyaPradesh Journal of Social Sciences, Vol.9, No.2, 2004, p.35. Data and Statistics (2002). World Bank group, ref: http://www.worldbank.org/data. Cockburn, C. (1985). Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men, and Technical Know-How. Pluto Press: London. Hall C.Margaret (1990).Women and Identity, Hemisphere Publishing: Washington. Huyer, Sophia and Tatjana Sikoska (2003). Overcoming the gender digital divide: Understanding ICTs and their potential for the Empowerment of women, INSTRAW, Research paper series, http://www.uninstraw.org/en/docs/gender_and _ict/Synthesis_Paper.pdf . Kanungo, S (2002). Information village: Bridging the digital divide in rural India. Proceedings of the Seventh International Working Conference of IFIP WG 9.4, Information and Communication Technologies and Development: New Opportunities, Perspectives and Challenges, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, May 29-31.
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- 81. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 67 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Women at Higher Education in Turkey: What Has Changed in 100 Years? Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevika* , Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgörb a Selçuk University, Department of Sociology, Turkey b Middle East Technical University, Department of Sociology, Turkey Abstract Research indicates that higher education affects woman in terms of empowerment, occupational status, social status attainment, labour market participation, and upward social mobility. In Turkey, women acquired the right to attain to the higher education in 1914. Women’s demand for getting education, the increased number of high schools (rüştiyes and idadis) and the needs for teacher training schools for girls led the increases of women’s inclusion in the higher education. The ideological climate of the period also required the women’s participation in the higher education. As a result of the nation-building process and many related sociological factors, new universities were opened across the country. The number of women in the higher education has increased from 22 (in 1914) to 1.873.699 in 2011 (TUİK, 2012). Additionally, the participation rate of woman at higher education has rised from 9,8 % in 1923 to 45,6 % in 2011 (TUİK, 2012). Within this framework, this paper aims to explore how the female students’ profiles have changed over the last 100 years. Who are those female university students? Who can attain universities nowadays? What are the differences and/or similarities among women in terms of their socio-demographic, family and educational background? Drawing on the Eurostudent Survey IV (2011) (http://www.eurostudent.eu/) which is nationwide representative and internationally comparable data, we explore the differences/similarities. Sample size for women is 8.500 out of population 16.817. Findings are explained within the discussions on modernization history of Turkey. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Woman; higher education; Turkey. * Corresponding Author. E-mail address: aylincakiroglucevik@gmail.com
- 82. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 68 1. Introduction In the last decades, it has been considered that there has been notable increasing female educational attainment in the higher level of education around the world. However, the participation of female displays “a steeper pyramid distribution” (Stromquist, 1989:144). Despite of lowest attainment of woman in higher education, research indicates that higher education affects woman in terms of empowerment, occupational status, social status attainment, labour market participation, and upward social mobility. However, the important point is that who can or cannot attain higher education. In this point, the attainment process becomes an important turning point so the research on the gender inequality of educational opportunity focuses on the attainment process including ascribed characteristics because that the stronger the relationship between attainment and ascribed aspects is, the weaker the chance of equality of educational opportunity and intergenerational social mobility (Aslankurt, 2013). There has been a rich literature about the determinants of educational attainment both in Turkey (except higher education attainment) and around the world. Structural and individual characteristics such as the mental ability (IQ), motivation level and other psychological factors influence the educational attainment. Structural level can be classified into two subtitles which are not independent from each other: Macro- structural factors and family related factors. In the societies, the most important macro-structural agent is the state which plays central role to regulate citizens’ education via laws and policies (Buchmann et al., 2001:80). The other macrostructural effect on education is the economic structure of nation (i.e. mode of production). Unlikely agricultural economic structure, industrialization strongly associated with the expansion/massification of education because of notable changes in occupational structure which required new knowledge and skills. Finally, the highest macro-structural factor is the global forces. The international agents related with the rights of women, herein, contribute for circulation of new gender identities (Rankin et al., 2006:27). For example, UNESCO Dakar Declaration in 2000 drives a framework for gender equality in education. The other structural factor is the family related factors. The reason of the importance of this factor is that the strong relationship between family features and educational attainment refers the inequality of educational opportunity (Aslankurt, 2013). According to the literature from industrialized and developing countries, there are great numbers of family features working as critical determinants of educational attainment of children. Therefore, it would be better to classify the family factors as family socioeconomic status, family structure and family decision process (Smits et al., 2006). As seen, educational attainment process has been affected by many intertwining factors and varies by genders. Within this framework, this paper aims to deals with the attainment process of women at higher education in Turkey, that is not subject of studies in Turkey. Moreover, it aims to explore how the female students’ profiles have changed over the last 100 years. Who are those female university students? Who can attain universities nowadays? What are the differences and/or similarities among women in terms of their socio-demographic, family and educational background? 2. History of Women Education in Turkey In the Conventional Ottoman Education System, before Tanzimat, it was not possible for girls to continue their education after the sıbyan school that would give religious training (Caporal, 1982:102). Boys were eligible to continue the other technical schools opened in the later years to train technical staff for the madrasa and/or army. Besides, families of the bureaucrat class would provide education to their male and female children at their own mansions. In short, while the rural girls could go to sıbyan school which was
- 83. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 69 not necessary until Tanzimat in general, the girls of the urban and bureaucrat (petty bourgeoisie) families could receive private education (by duennas after Tanzimat) at the mansion (Tekeli, 1997:173). In Tanzimat era, it was decided that rüştiyes should be opened as schools that would enable the girls to continue secondary education after the sıbyan school. However, these schools did not become common. Almost all of them were in İstanbul and their number was inadequate. In addition, primary school became compulsory for girls and boys in Tanzimat era and it was decided that the number of rüştiyes for girls should be increased (Caporal, 1982:102). Because it was not considered right in religious terms for girls to share the same space with boys of the same age or because girls had reached “the age at which they should keep away from boys” (Dulum, 2006:32-35), there arose the problem of who would become their teachers. At first, old male teachers attended their courses as they were “reliable and licensed” (Akşit, 2012:91), but later it was decided that teacher-training schools (called Darülmuallimat) should be opened to obtain female teachers (Caporal, 1982:104; Jayawardena, 1986:28). Considering the era’s ideology of women and education, it seems that girls were expected to attend the school for the purpose of “being a good mother, a good wife and a good Muslim” (Kandiyoti, 1991:27). However, the increase in women’s literacy under Abdülhamid II became influential on feminist movement and women’s organization (Çakır, 1996). Women’s demand for education, the struggle of women movement in this field, the increased number of rüştiyes and idadis and the inadequacy of the teacher training schools for girls to train teachers have birth to the need for women’s inclusion in the higher education. At first, women’s higher education starting at conferences in Darülfünun, the only university of the Ottoman initially, was later institutionalized with the opening of İnas Darülfünunu (1914) (Baskın, 2007; Caporal, 1982:113). There were 129 students registered at İnas Darülfünunu, giving education only to women between 1914 and 1919. Baskın (2007) makes such an evaluation about the socioeconomic background of the students: At İnas Darülfünunu, there were mültezim children who could be labelled as the elites of the traditional social structure as well as students from the families of army members, and the children of governor, revenue officer, principal registrar. While the class origin of these students varied, it would not be wrong to assume that most of them exhibited petit bourgeois features parallel to the background of newly- developed social forms and that the students from the state officials’ families were predominant (Baskın, 2007:157). Opened in İstanbul and attended by a limited number of women, İnas Darülfünunu was officially closed down in 1921 as a result of the fact that female students were taught at separate classes and so protested the school and boycotted their classes, thus attending the class for males. Thereafter, coeducation was adopted by Darülfünun (Abadan-Unat, 1981:12; Baskın, 2007:183). In other words, women’s demand and action to pass to the coeducation became the reason for the closure of İnas Darülfünunu. When the women graduated from İnas Darülfünunu, they could take place as teachers in the working life. When the women were allowed to take education in fields of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy (1917) (Dulum, 2006:53), they started to have different jobs. In the declaration of Turkish Republic and in the building process of the nation-state, education seems to be used as part of this process. In the period from 1923 to 1950, education has the function of creating national identity, unity and consciousness of citizenship. There are two functions of education in this period: 1) to shape the population as new individuals who have adopted nation-state, citizenship, secularism, and Kemalist ideology. 2) to train manpower required to exist in the capitalist world. After nation-building
- 84. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 70 process, along with the industrialization and other social-economic development and many related sociological factors, new universities were opened across the country. Thus, the number of women in the higher education has increased from 22 (in 1914) to 1.873.699 in 2011. Additionally, the participation rate of woman at higher education has rised from 9,8 % in 1923 to 45,6 % in 2011 (TUİK, 2012). 3. Methodology This study depends on the Eurostudent Survey IV (2011) which is nationwide representative and internationally comparable data. EUROSTUDENT project has been carried out since 2000. Turkey participated in this project in its third round in 2007 and in 2011 which is the fourth round of the project (Orr et al., 2011:9).The main aims of the EUROSTUDENT are to get comparable key data and basic information which allow describing the socio-economic living conditions of students in Europe; to provide a structured and standardized monitoring system with which the effects of structural measures and changes can be identified for specific student groups; to describe the current situation and with the aid of international comparison to identify obstacles to an inclusive and effective European Higher Education Area (EHEA), which is related with Lisbon strategy and the Bologna process. Main survey method used in Turkey is online survey in spring semester 2010 and sample technique is simple random sampling (10% from each university). The initial sample is 152.144 but 19.479 case is the final sample (Orr et al., 2011:224). However, 2-year upper high school students (who constitute 0.1 % of the sample), graduate students (who constitute 11.4 % of the sample) and distance education students (who constitute 2.5 % of the sample) were excluded because undergraduate (bachelor) students who enrolled any faculty except distance education are our main case. With all these exclusions, the data set is reduced to 16.817 individual cases. Sample size for women is 8.500 out of population 16.817. 4. Findings and discussion 4.1. Socio-demographic characteristics As seen from the table below, although the average age for all undergraduate students is around 21, there is a significant difference between female (M=21.1244, SD=1.79078) and male (M=21.5604, SD=1.90520) students in terms of age (t(16610)=-15.880, p=0.000). Table 1: Percentage of socio-demographic variables by gender Variables Female Male Age (Mean) 21.1244 21.5604 t=-15.880 df= 16610.522 p=0.000 Living place until 12 years old. city center > 1 million population city center < 1 million population country town town village 40.0 20.4 28.8 5.1 5.7 100 % 32.9 22.3 27.7 6.1 10.9 100 % 2 =212.474 df=4 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316
- 85. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 71 This can be related with the significant difference between genders in terms of direct transition to higher education: Females (66 %) are more likely to directly enter to the tertiary education (i.e. no interruption between high school and tertiary education), compared to males (58.9 %). According to Özsoy (2002:228), females are more likely to be placed in a faculty after the first university entry exam but they are less likely to more times attend the university entry exam, compared to males. To this end, females tend to be more “rational” in the preference of faculty to enroll at the first exam. The reason can be related with the perception of gendered roles of woman -who will be married “out”- as wife, mother and housewife which are not required more education. When we look at distribution of the type of region in which s/he grew up until the age of 12, there is a significant relationship between living place and gender (2 (4, n=16816)=212.474, p=0.000): we see that 5.7 % of female students and 10.9 % of male students are from village. It means that male students from rural region are about two times higher than female students from rural, that is coherent with the agricultural economy and family decision process favoring the males over females. What this indicates is that rural and urban differences which go back to early period of republic (even Ottoman Empire) have still been the issue to attain higher education. Considering gender, rural females are the most underrepresented group in higher education system in Turkey. Like urban women in early republic period, urban women are more likely to attain higher education than rural women do. 4.2. Family background characteristic We see from the Table 2 that there is a significant difference between genders in terms of both education level of father and mother. The percentage of all male students whose father has low education level (i.e. primary and below education) is higher than those of females whose father has low education level: 36.2 % of male students and 28.2 % of female students. Moreover, females (29.4 %) are more likely to have father with high education level, compared to males (26.5 %). Considering empirical and theoretical arguments, parents’ educational level is a crucial indicator to value education. Highly educated parents value education greatly and encourage and invest their children’s education particularly their daughters. Therefore, highly educated parents expect their children to achieve at least their own level of education (Stromquist, 1989:155). Regarding this, in case of Turkey, since late Ottoman period, educated fathers give more educational opportunity to daughters such as duennas, private teaching at home from foreign teachers, encouraging them for reading and writing and lastly higher education. Therefore, in the history of Turkish modernization, educated fathers have played an important role for education of daughters’ and their empowerment process (as Kandiyoti (1991:25) words “advocators of emancipation of women”). Table 2: Percentage of parents’ education level by gender Variables Female Male Variables Female Male Education level of father Illiterate drop out from primary school primary school secondary school high school university Master/PhD 0.7 2.3 25.2 14.2 28.2 26.7 2.7 100 % 2.2 5.7 28.3 12.4 25.0 24.1 2.4 100 % Education level of mother Illiterate drop out from primary school primary school secondary school high school university Master/PhD 4.9 5.6 41.4 10.9 23.3 13.0 0.9 100 % 12.0 8.9 37.9 10.1 19.3 11.2 0.7 100 % 2 =243.195 df= 6 p=0.000 2 =371.126 df= 6 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316 Total (N) 8500 8316 When we look at the education level of mother, we see remarkable differences between genders. Although there is a significant difference between genders in terms of education level of mother, more than
- 86. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 72 half of female (51.9 %) and male (58.8 %) students have mother with low education level. Therefore, their education level is higher than their mother’s. It means that for these students attendance of tertiary education is the social upward mobility in terms of mother education level. Table 3: Percentage of parents’ occupational status by gender The profile of parents’ occupation and employment status are given tables. As seen from the Table 3 and Table 4, the difference between father’s and mother’s employment status has not been interesting, considering the employment rate of women in Turkey. For TUİK (2013), the employment ratio of women (15-64 aged) is 27.8 % in 2011. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that majority of student have mother without work (i.e. as housewives). As seen from the Table 4, like in occupational status, there is significant difference between parents’ employment status by genders. In general, student’s fathers work for salary or wages or are retired, not working. The percentage for female students is 37.5 % and 28.5 %, while for male students it is 33 % and 29.1 % respectively. Additionally, the notable occupation groups are the being employer with paid workers and being self-employed without any paid workers. All these imply the father’s economic power for educational expenses of children and job security. The regular wages (whether as monthly salary or pension) or relatively high wages (whether via being self-employed or employer with paid worker) give opportunity to father for investment of children’s education. As mentioned before, majority of mothers are housewife and not working in formal economy which is coherent with the general (un)employment rate of women in Turkey, which results from inadequate woman employment policies, and patriarchal ideology which defines women firstly as mother, wife and housewife. As discussed before, since particularly in early republic period, education has been a mean to create women as “a good wife, a good mother, a good housewife and a good spouse” (Abadan-Unat, 1981:14) and as “an important source of labour, particularly for white-collar occupations” for the modern, secure and industrialized new Turkish republic (Gündüz-Hoşgör, 1996:120). Variables Female Male Variables Female Male The occupation of the father High level managers High qualified occupations Technicians and associate professionals Middle/low level directory or office clerks Service/sales workers Skilled agricultural and fishery workers Craft and related trades workers Plant and machine operators and assemblers unskilled worker armed forces/military no 3.9 15.0 5.0 18.4 6.2 4.9 19.7 6.4 12.0 3.7 4.8 100 % 4.0 13.3 3.8 18.0 5.2 7.7 18.8 6.2 12.5 3.3 7.0 100 % The occupation of the mother High level managers High qualified occupation Technicians and associate professionals Middle/low level directory or office clerks Service/sales workers Skilled agricultural and fishery workers Craft and related trades workers Plant and machine operators and etc. unskilled worker armed forces/military no(housewife) 0.8 8.1 2.5 7.4 1.6 0.5 2.1 0.3 2.5 0.2 74.0 100 % 0.5 6.7 1.7 5.8 1.6 1.1 1.8 0.3 2.0 0.0 78.5 100 % 2 =123.367 df= 10 p=0.000 2 =91.410 df= 10 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316 Total (N) 8500 8316
- 87. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 73 Table 4: Percentage of parents’ employment status by gender Table 5: Other socioeconomic status of family variables by gender Variables Female Male Total Income from family/partner 293.39 320.75 307.11 t=-5.890 df= 14953.776 p=0.000 Total expenses paid by parents 427.10 310.25 369.23 t=9.227 df= 16644.863 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316 16816 There is a significant difference between all female and male students. Actually income from parents can be called as “pocket money” of students who is free to choose what to spend it for. On the other hand, expenses from parents are for study-related expenses directly paid by parents such as dormitory and faculty fees. The average income from family of females (293.39 TL) is lower than those of male (320.75 TL), while average of income of males is higher than average income of all (307.11 TL). There is significant difference between all female and male students (t(14953.776)=-5.890, p=0.000). It can be associated with the parents’ investment with the favor of the daughter (like fathers in early republican period). For example, if she enrolls in some faculties such as medical, engineering which have higher fee than others; or private university which has higher fee than state universities, expenses for daughter will be increased for her educational status which will be gained (called as “gold bracelet”). Therefore, it would be argued that considering that high income families are more likely to enable their children, particularly their daughters, stay in longer via economic resources they have and make more investment. 4.3. Educational background characteristics Firstly, about the half of the university students are from Anatolian high school (48.1 %), regular/super high school (37 %) and vocational high school (7.1 %). The percentage of students from private school (4.4 %), science high school (2.5 %) and other school (7 %) follow them. In addition, there is a significant difference between genders in terms of type of high school (2 (5, n=16815)=210.068, p=0.000). The percentage of females graduated from Anatolian high school (53.3 %) is higher those of males (42.9 %), while the percentage of males graduated from vocational school (8.8 %) and regular/super high school (40.2 %) are higher those of females (5.6 % and 33.9 % respectively) Variables Female Male Variables Female Male The father is currently doing working for daily wages working for salary or wage employer with paid workers self-employed, but not employed any paid worker unpaid family worker in family business not working, but looking for a job retired, not working died 5.2 37.5 11.7 9.1 0.8 1.9 28.5 4.7 100 % 7.4 33.0 10.1 9.6 1.8 2.9 29.1 5.3 100 % The mother is currently doing working for daily wages working for salary or wage employer with paid workers self-employed, but not employed worker unpaid family worker in family business not working, but looking for a job retired, not working housewife, not working died 1.1 11.8 1.5 1.1 0.6 0.5 11.6 70.2 1.4 100 % 1.2 9.2 1.2 0.8 0.9 0.4 10.4 73.9 1.7 100 % 2 =120.844 df= 8 p=0.000 2 =58.759 df= 9 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316 Total (N) 8500 8316
- 88. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 74 Table 6: Variables related to high school by gender Variables Female Male Variables Female Male The type of high school Vocational High School Science High School Anatolian High School Regular/Super High School Private High School Other, Military schools, Foreign schools 5.6 2.2 53.3 33.9 4.3 0.7 100 % 8.8 2.9 42.9 40.2 4.4 0.8 100 % Region of Secondary school Less than 20.000 Between 20.001 and 100 .000 Between 100.001 and 500.000 More than 500.001 9.5 26.5 23.3 40.7 100 % 8.7 24.2 27.1 40.0 100 % 2 =210.068 df=5 p=0.000 2 =35.762 df=3 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316 Total (N) 8500 8316 When we look at the region of secondary school, we see that the distribution of the region is consistent with the region in which s/he grew up until the age of 12 and the type of high schools which point out the region such as urban areas with many type of and quality of high schools. Students from secondary school in region less than 20.000 residents (i.e. village) are the underrepresented group in the higher education. In this sense, it can be argued that young in urban region are more likely to access to higher education. As mentioned before, inadequate infrastructure of education in rural region hinders education attainment and equal of educational opportunity for both males and females (specifically). Table 7: Other educational variables by gender Unlike kindergarden, the private tutoring courses are common supplementary education institution. Private tutoring history goes back to Ottoman Empire where educated and high socioeconomic background families supplied their children, especially favor of their daughters, by foreign duennas/teachers in the house because of limited education facilities for females and religious reasons. Until 1970, private tutoring had worked as supporter for school lectures and some kind as preparer for school entry exams. However, with increased demand, limited supply and competition in entrance into higher education with the practice of central exam caused the private teaching institutions to increase in number especially in urban and in the West (Gök, 2005:102). However, the main rise had been after 80s because of higher demand for higher education. Like kindergarden attendance, females are more likely to participate in private tutoring courses longer. 5. Conclusion In this study, it aims to discuss and compare the profile of women at higher education in Turkey within the discussions on modernization history of Turkey. In this sense, over 100 year with expansion in higher education institution and other social and economic changes in Turkey, the differences and/or similarities between first cohort and relatively last cohort have been tried to explore thanks to Eurostudent Survey in 2011. In the educational system of the Ottoman Empire, educational facilities were provided to the ruling class, males and urbanites only. With an agriculture-based economy, Ottoman did not need educated subjects. Brought to agenda with Tanzimat, debates over modernization, westernization and progress brought forward Variables Female Male Total The kindergarden attended (years) 1.5579 1.4103 1.4849 t=10.500 df= 16433.198 p=0.000 The private tutoring course attended (months) 15.3578 14.6123 14.98 t=6.591 df= 16814 p=0.000 Total (N) 8500 8316 16816
- 89. Aylin Çakıroğlu Çevikand Ayşe Gündüz Hoşgör / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 75 the structural transformations and women’s participation in the field of education. Accordingly, both education and women gained importance with Tanzimat as two most important parts of the project of a new society. The value attached to women and education underwent some change together with the social transformation. The relationship built between women and backwardness of the country and its solution made it possible to offer the educational facilities to women. The schools newly opened and beginning to be spread were the attempts to enable women to receive education. However, urban-rural and class differences drew attention as factors that affected women’s educational status. The educational facilities provided by the middle and upper-class urban families to their daughters, i.e. duennas, private tutoring, intellectual environment, made them privileged from the illiterate lower-class and rural women. This privilege enabled them to take place in the frontline in their women struggle and the “women question” to be visible by mentioning the class problems such as education, working. Women’s presence in field of education and working life in the decadent years of Ottomans is related to the westernization and social policies based on modernization and secularization. Ottoman women movement played an important role in providing educational facilities to women through associations and journals. Educated urban and upper-class women within the women movement struggled for the right of education to women. One of its important achievements was to enable women to be admitted to higher education. When we look at the students’ profiles, however, it appears that they are the daughters of middle and upper-class families. Accordingly, class privileges are preserved. However, the institutions where lower-class girls take education are also existent: female art schools, female institutes and vocational schools, including teacher training schools and midwifery schools, etc. These schools served to provide women with a chance to take place in working life after graduation and to achieve upward mobility. However, these schools reproduce the gender roles and thus enable women to be a good wife, mother and Muslim even if they cannot find a place in working life. As seen, the first students at higher education were from high socioeconomic status family and urban areas. Especially, the effects of the ideological climate of the period, woman movement struggle and fathers’ value on the higher education were the main determinants of the attainment to higher education. However, there has been notable educational inequality among women in terms of regional, SES and urban-rural disparity. Turning to female students in 2011, according to findings they are also mostly coming from urban areas, high SES families, highly educated and prestige occupational father, and better educational background (mostly Anatolian high schools). In other words, females from rural areas and low SES family are underrepresented group in the higher education system in contemporary Turkey, like Ottoman period. In this sense, in the last 100 years, despite of the expansion of the institutions, social and economic transformations in Turkey, there has been not so much differences among women at higher education in Turkey. Acknowledgements We would like to thank other Eurostudent national commission members for sharing the data with us: Prof. Dr. Nezih Güven, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Şen and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özgür Arun.
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- 91. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 77 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Look Beyond What You See: Engendering Central Anatolian Prehistory Aysel Arslan* Koç University Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Turkey Abstract Gender was an inseparable part of each person’s identity in the past as it is today. Although archaeological debates have included gender studies since the 1980s, most of the discussions find it difficult to go beyond sexual identifications, and making claims on gender roles is a necessarily harder challenge than in other disciplines. As a concept, gender can be analyzed through mainly two areas of research in prehistory. Bioarchaeology informs us how ancient people lived because human remains can tell us what people consumed, what kind of occupations they had or where they lived as well as whether they had any accidents. The second area of research in archaeology is figural representations of humans such as figurines. These representations are very helpful in order to understand the concepts in the minds of their creators. This paper aims to assess a diachronic overview in gender roles in this transitional stage of human history. Both women’s and men’s roles in daily activities are believed to go through major alterations as food sources were changing and people were going from a diet based primarily on hunted and gathered foods to one based on cultivation and animal husbandry. The case study focuses on Central Anatolia from 8500 to 5000 BC and addresses changes in figural representations of humans as well as mortuary practices in various sites. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Gender archaeology; prehistory; bioarchaeology; figurines; Central Anatolia * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-555-202-1052. E-mail address: aarslan@ku.edu.tr
- 92. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 78 1. Introduction When I mention to people that I research gender in the Neolithic period, the period when people first settled down and decided to do agriculture, most of the time I get questions about matriarchy and the Mother Goddess. The idea of a society ruled by women and the Mother Goddess seems to be still attracting a lot of attention by the public. The public interest in gender-related issues in the past communities mainly revolves around the power relations between males and females. But, how do we understand who was ‘wearing the pants’ in the society if they are long gone? Archaeologists have an answer to this question. In this paper, I first provide a historical background to gender archaeology and thereafter elaborate on the use of bioarchaeological studies when considering gender. Bioarchaeology is one of the main sources of a gendered approach since human body gives archaeologists a great amount of information about how people lived, what they ate, and what they did regularly. This way it becomes easier to make assumptions about gendered lifeways in earlier periods. After that, I discuss figurine analysis and its impacts on gender archaeology. I especially examine the mother goddess theory that dominated the archaeological interpretation of female figurines until the 1980s. This theory has been disputed by many scholars (eg. Fleming 1969; Tringham and Conkey 1998), yet there is still a contingent who supports this idea and proposes that women’s ritual power and importance in the society stems from their biological roles as birth givers (eg. Roller 1999). Finally, I summarize my interpretations of the changing gendered lifeways in Central Anatolia from 8500 to 5000 BC as a case study. 2. The History of Gender Archaeology Anthropological studies that concentrate on women, power and early states started as early as the 1970s and it became clear that it was necessary to understand women in ancient history in order to understand women’s roles in history (Hutson et al. 2013: 45). Archaeological research on gender and sexuality developed thereafter in the 1980s (Conkey and Spector 1984; Voss 2000: 181; Spencer-Wood 2000: 113; Spector 1996: 485). However, gender theory in archaeology and anthropology, as in other fields of the social sciences, take their roots from much earlier theories. The origins of the discussion go back to the hypothesis in Engels’ 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Influenced by the post- enlightenment theories, Morgan, and Bachofen, Engels proposed that there is a steady social development in human evolution, and matrilineal and matriarchal societies were the original but the earliest social organizations (Engels 1997[1884]: 12). He (1997[1884]: 14) discusses that in the earliest period of human civilization not fathers, but mothers were highly esteemed because it was not possible to determine the biological father. However, with the increase of wealth, men became more important than women in the family. He says “The overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex.” (Engels 1997[1884]: 14, italics in the original). With the appearance of monogamy, the first division of labor (childbearing), and the first class oppression by males onto the females began (Engels 1997[1884]: 16). In the 1970s, the feminist movement in anthropology and archaeology gained pace. In 1984, Conkey and Spector wrote ‘Archaeology and the Study of Gender’, underlining that there is androcentrism in archaeological and ethnological research. They criticized the archaeological approach to female roles as females are less visible and regarded as separate from males (Conkey and Spector 1984: 6). It was generally accepted that universal laws of behavior dictated male and female roles and relationships. In many cases, although archaeologists did not think of women and gender, they were making assumptions or claims about their roles and positions in prehistoric societies. While making these assumptions, they made use of western
- 93. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 79 ideas about gender roles and treat women as stable parts of the cultural environment. In doing so, these archaeologists had a tendency to think of women as unchanging beings. Therefore, women could never be agents in changes or cultural developments (Wylie 1991: 33). New theoretical approaches in archaeology challenged the past approaches that tried to achieve universal laws of behavior and accepted that there is room for the individual behavior in archaeological research. The addition of the individual together with feminist thought and critique led many archaeologists to recognize that they were, in fact, studying the people in the past and not whole cultures, and these people, especially women, had been transformed by archaeologists, as Tringham calls them, into ‘faceless blobs’ (Tringham 1991: 97). Until the 1990s the archaeological investigations on gender roles mainly aimed to make women’s inputs to past societies more visible, to make investigations on the relative status of women and men, and to investigate how women’s roles were affected by patriarchy and social complexity in the earlier cities (Bolger 2013: 6). But, these investigations did not focus on the differences between women in terms of ethnicity, class, age, sexuality and religion, or the existence of ambiguous multiple genders. With the development of Third Wave feminism in the 1990s, one of the main goals of gender studies in archaeology has been to bring out the connection between gender and other aspects of social identity mainly because the past cultures constructed gender differences not only between men and women but also by many means such as class, ethnicity, age, and religion (Bolger 2013: 6). The second main focus of the research is to leave the binary division of gender categories male/female or man/woman and find out whether there is evidence for gender diverse individuals in prehistory (Bolger 2013: 6). Gender archaeology has been highly influenced by social theories such as Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) practice theory and concept of habitus, Michel Foucault’s (1978) work on sexuality, and especially Judith Butler’s (1990; 1993) work on sex, gender and body which caused the earlier approaches to gender, especially the sex/gender dichotomy, to be re-evaluated in a rather radical sense (Bolger 2013: 6). Butler sees sex not as a part of biology but as a product of discourse that is created in time through repeated actions as people behave in particular ways (Butler 1990; 1993). Those who are influenced by Butler’s work are against seeing sex as biologically determined at birth, but instead they see sex as something that can be manipulated, and the perception of a person’s body can be changed (Sofaer 2013: 229). Her concept of sex as a social construct has influenced considerable amount of research on gender ambiguity, multiple genders, sexuality and queer identities (Bolger 2013: 6). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, an expanding literature on the social and political conditions of various sexual minorities who were identified as ‘queer’ including lesbians, gays, bisexuals, sex workers, transsexuals and others have been published (Voss 2000: 183-184). These topics were rarely investigated by gender archaeologists before. 3. Bioarchaeological Analysis in Gender Archaeology Since the human body is the most direct evidence of past people, the bioarchaeological study of the human body has a very crucial part in gender archaeology. By studying human remains, it is possible to understand how people lived and whether there has been any change between and among males and females in terms of occupation, lifestyle, eating habits and dietary intake or status. Although, compared to other disciplines, it is much more difficult to apply Butler’s theories on prehistoric archaeology, at some instances it is even possible to understand multiple genders or identities through mortuary remains. Although sexual identification of the human skeletons was being done for several decades, only from the late 1990s did gender become a main area of investigation, around when a bio-cultural approach within physical anthropology that studies the interaction between biology and behavior developed. Bio-cultural
- 94. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 80 approach aims to find out the effects of social relations on human biology with the underlying principle that human skeletal and dental tissues are sensitive to events and lifeways, and respond to those in biologically predictable ways (Zuckerman and Armelagos 2011). In other words, our habitual activities such as whether we do sports or not, what we eat, and what kind of job we have leave significant marks on our skeletons. With the bio-cultural approach, it is possible to reconstruct someone’s life by a thorough examination of their skeleton to some extent. Recent bioarchaeological analysis has identified gender as a key axis of investigation (Zuckerman and Armelagos 2011: 9). In order to investigate gender, the first thing to do is to divide skeletons into two groups. Humans show differences in form between males and females on the basis of morphological characteristics of the skeleton; especially the skull and the pelvis make it possible to determine sex. The second step of gender investigation is examining the skeletons in terms of cultural influences such as musculoskeletal markers, illnesses or diet and compare them according to sex (Sofaer 2013: 228). Bioarchaeological investigations of gender cover a wide range of issues. These have been summarized by Sandra E. Hollimon (2011) in six major themes: Mortuary analysis: Typically, the main focus of gender investigation has been to provide sex determinations of skeletons to allow comparisons in gendered treatment patterns through the sex associations of grave goods, position and orientation of the body. The main focus of this research is on how differently individuals are positioned and whether and how their identities in life were important in treatments after death (Sofaer 2013: 232). This study helps to identify exceptional individuals and also third or fourth gender individuals if discrepancies between biological sex and grave goods are observed. Activity reconstruction, division of labor and occupational specialization: Studies that focus on gendered activity patterns tend to concentrate on gender roles and the division of labor. The study of activity-related skeletal modifications including degenerative joint disease, musculoskeletal markers, trauma and tooth wear are a part of bioarchaeological investigations (Hollimon 2011: 153) that give us an idea about prehistoric activity patterns. For example, Molleson’s (2000) work on skeletons from Abu Hureyra, a Neolithic site in Syria, showed that the female skeletons yielded evidence for injuries related to stress, resulting in severe arthritis of the big toe. She (2000: 311-316) suggests that this type of injury could be the result of a demanding activity such as grinding grains on querns on a regular basis for a couple of hours every day. This suggests that women spent a very long time doing food preparation tasks at Abu Hureyra (Molleson 2000: 324). Intentional body modification: Bodily modification focuses on deliberate acts that aim to change the look of the body such as head binding, foot binding or dental evulsion (Hollimon 2011: 156). Theories related to intentional bodily modification also discuss gender in terms of the materialization of symbolic concepts and social relations as such modifications focus on social difference through bodily difference (Sofaer 2013: 235). For example, in the Chalcolithic site of Şeyh Höyük (Turkey), creating elongated heads through head binding might have been a cultural tradition mostly related to females, because when five adult crania (three female two male) were examined it became clear that while the female skulls show noteworthy artificial deformation, the male skulls show only slight head modification (Şenyürek and Tunakan 1951: 433-434). Health and disease: This study investigates the influence of gender on health and disease and tries to understand the gendered division of labor by investigating whether men and women were exposed to pathogens or they suffered from nutritional deficiency (Sofaer 2013: 233). Stable isotope analyses: Stable isotopes are used to examine diet and migration. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes differ in classes of foods and they are reflected in skeletons, making it possible to examine the paleodiets (Richards et al. 2003: 67). Isotopic ratios of strontium, on the other hand, differ according to local geology, and oxygen isotopes in rainwater vary according to local climate (Boric and Price 2013: 32998).
- 95. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 81 These isotopes are passed on to human body through food and water, and they can be used to shed light on gender relations. However, it is important to be aware of the ethnocentric assumptions about the relative value of different foods (Sofaer 2013: 234). For instance, according to the stable isotope analysis on Çayönü Tepesi skeletons, there was a sex-based difference in food consumption because males seem to have consumed more meat and cereals than females (Pearson et al. 2013: 185-187). Human migration can also be tracked with strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopes based on the principle that dental tissues do not remodel with age like bone. Isotopic signatures in teeth can be used to locate the local and non-local individuals by comparing the values with a local control sample. Violence and warfare: Bioarchaeological studies that concentrate on violence and warfare tend to examine sex differences and the prevalence of traumatic injuries in specific contexts, and over time through gender relations (Hollimon 2011: 159). Examining human burials with these methods and questions in mind, it becomes possible to explain patterns of gendered divisions of labor. Bio-archaeology has made substantial contributions to understanding these aspects of women’s lives through investigations about the traces of these on female body (Sofaer 2013: 236). 4. The Mother Goddess Movement and Figurine Studies in Gender Archaeology One of the most widely used archaeological finds that are analyzed by the gender theorists in archaeology is figurines. Until recently, the prehistoric figurine discussion had been dominated by the Mother Goddess theory. When various anthropomorphic figurines started to be found in the excavations in the Near East, Mesopotamia and Europe, they were automatically thought to be the proof of a matriarchy and a religion that centers on fertility, females, sexuality, procreation and motherhood. The female representations were named the Great Goddess/Mother Goddess, and the male representations as her son or lover (Hamilton et al. 1996: 283). The development of feminist thought in the 1960s affected the development of a new female-oriented version of the past. They used figurines as the archaeological data to support their theory. The Mother Goddess movement gained pace with Marija Gimbutas, who creates female-oriented uniform and nonviolent cultures that have artistic productions and are related to earth and sea in the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods in Europe (Gimbutas 1982: 17-18). This peaceful culture of the Old Europe was overthrown by a male-oriented, aggressive, nomadic and pastoral culture, the Indo-Europeans, coming from the Russian steppe around 3500 BC (Gimbutas 1982: 9). Nevertheless, this theory can hardly be regarded as a part of gender theory in archaeology, because it sees the whole of Europe as a block without any different lifestyles or societies living side by side. Moreover, it does not ask any questions about the gender roles or agencies of men and women (Tringham and Conkey 1998: 23). The Mother Goddess theory ignores the agency of prehistoric people, homogenizes them and their identities, roles and practices, which is what gender archaeology has been especially trying to avoid. The roles and symbolic position of men and women are regarded as unchanging. The wide acceptance of matriarchal societies in the Neolithic is mainly based on the assumptions that the majority of figurines in the European Neolithic are female, and male representations are few (Bailey 2013: 246). But, this assumption is false because, in fact, most of the figurines from various sites are sexless, neither male nor female, but only remind one of human form (e.g. Meskell and Joyce 2003: 95-127; Bailey 2005; Nakamura and Meskell 2009: 206). Sexing anthropomorphic figurines is difficult because most of the time figurines are very ambiguous. Also, we should not assume that male and female concepts are singular, unchanging, or shared within and across communities, because if we do that, we oversimplify the ideas of prehistoric people about identity and
- 96. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 82 what it meant to be human. Since the majority of prehistoric figurines are asexual, or merely human, it is not very easy to think of the Neolithic as a stable period with only males and females. It actually seems that there were more categories and these categories were more flexible, interchangeable and questionable (Bailey 2013: 248). To sum up, gender oriented analysis is possible by using figurines and other figural representations. Although it is much more challenging than bioarchaeological analysis since interpretations of figural representations can be more subjective and it is more difficult to securely sex them, they contribute to the overall interpretation of the lives of prehistoric people. 5. Case Study: Engendering Central Anatolian Neolithic The Neolithic, the period when people first began to settle down and domesticate plants and animals, was a period of change in terms of economy, technology, society and ideology. Research, however, remained restricted to male roles while women and children were either neglected altogether or even assumed to be analogous to modern day gender stereotypes. The debate on gender in this period remains strong. While some scholars envisage the Neolithic period as a prehistoric heaven where women and men led peaceful lives in blissful harmony, others disagree. Instead, they perceive the Neolithic as the end of sexual equality. These two opposing scenarios demand to be explored in further elaboration. The aim of this case study is to assess alterations in gender roles during this important transitional stage in Central Anatolia, in other words roughly around 8500 to 5000 BC. The results of the analysis summarized here concentrate on figural representations of humans, including figurines, wall paintings and relief decorated pottery, and bioarchaeology such as burial treatments and skeletal analysis in various sites in this region. The main questions I explore in my research are: How did the inhabitants perceive gender in the Neolithic period in Central Anatolia? Do the representations of gender change over time in Central Anatolia between 8500 BC and 5000 BC? If so, how? The analyses from the earlier sites and the earlier occupation levels of Çatalhöyük settlements show a continuation in mortuary practices and an “equality” in male and female burials in terms of grave goods, location and position of burials, but this picture starts to change after around 6500 BC. Çatalhöyük has a key role in understanding this change because it is the only well-documented site showing this change in Central Anatolia (Düring 2002). Through this transition femaleness/femininity became a more prominent theme as opposed to masculinity/phallocentrism with more female figurines being produced and more female burials being buried inside buildings in the later occupation levels of Çatalhöyük. Nonetheless, the skeletal analyses show that both males and females did similar work at Çatalhöyük. The prominence of a tradition based on femaleness/femininity seems to continue through the period following the Neolithic, since an emphasis on female figurines and images can be observed on relief decorated pottery. The number of female burials increase while male burials decrease in the later periods. While hunting scenes on the walls and the trophies of hunted aurochs were integral parts of Çatalhöyük houses, apart from a few possible hunting scenes on the relief decorated pottery, domestic production such as agriculture and the milking of cows become part of the imagery in the later period. This might be regarded as another indication of the increased importance of domestic sphere as opposed to wild. The increased importance of domestication and decreased significance of hunting in people’s lives might have resulted in some changes in the way they see the world, their ideology and social structures, while a reverse situation is also possible. Changes in these people’s ideology could be the reason for the Central Anatolian settlements becoming fully dependent on domesticated products. Whichever way the transition
- 97. Aysel Arslan /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 83 occurred, the result was the same: an increase in the female representations both in the mortuary contexts and visual media and a drop in male imagery and burials. 6. Conclusion Gender is an essential part of our personality that has been overlooked until the 1980s in archaeology. Until then, the archaeological interpretations mainly concentrated on the “men’s” roles by putting men in the center of history. The Mother Goddess movement that gained pace especially in the 1960s with the development of feminist theories, brought a gynocentric world vision, but this movement lacked the main components for turning women from passive objects into active agents in the creation of history. The feminist critique in archaeology in 1980 and onwards aimed to break down the phallocentric view of history and prehistory by turning women and other gender diverse individuals into history makers. Discussing gender in prehistory requires the help of several different sub-disciplines and specialties. The bioarchaeological analysis in archaeology sheds light on how people lived in prehistoric societies. It is one of the main sources of analysis in gender-oriented research because our skeletons give extensive information about our diet, the habitual activities we do throughout our lives and our illnesses (e.g. Pearson et al. 2013; Redfern and DeWitte 2011). By studying grave goods and the position of the skeleton, archaeologists can identify exceptional or gender diverse individuals. Skeletal modifications can inform us about gendered activity patterns and division of labor and sometimes the health of individuals. Stable Isotope Analysis yields evidence for diet and migration which can be used for comparisons between males and females (Pearson et al. 2013). Anthropomorphic representations on visual media is another area of concentration. Figurines and other human representations are one of the most widely analyzed and discussed archaeological finds by gender theorists (such as Bailey 2005, 2013, Meskell and Joyce 2003, Tringham and Conkey 1998). Visual imagery gives clues about how the people perceived gendered individuals, or what stereotyped gendered groups such as females or males looked like. Although these images/figurines themselves are interpretations of a given reality or an idea in the maker’s mind (Garcia-Ventura 2012: 505), they have been useful in gender oriented research because they give us clues about how gender roles were perceived in the earlier periods. The main question this study has aimed to answer is how the gender roles changed over several millennia through the Neolithic period in Central Anatolia by trying to avoid the Euro-centric worldviews as much as possible. However, it is not possible for a researcher to get rid of their stereotypes and taboos completely because we all grow up in a culture that engraves certain ways of life and thinking into our minds. Therefore, as a female living in Turkey, my research here is undoubtedly also filled with my culture and stereotypes even though I have made a conscious effort to be careful not to be biased. Acknowledgements This paper is based on my unpublished MA thesis “Gendered Lifeways in Central Anatolia in the Neolithic and the Early Chalcolithic Periods (8500 – 5000 BC).” I am indebted to my advisor Rana Özbal, who read the earlier versions of this manuscript and offered me valuable comments and editorial advice. References Bailey, Douglas W. Prehistoric figurines: representation and corporeality in the Neolithic. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
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- 101. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 87 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Women’s Employment and Fertility: Event-History Analyses of Turkey Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgörena* , Banu Ergöçmenb , Aysıt Tanselc ab Hacettepe University, Institute of Population Studies, Department of Demography, Turkey c Middle East Technical University, Department of Economics, Turkey Abstract The conflict between working and mothering roles has been studied in the literature thoroughly primarily to investigate the decline in fertility as part of demographic transition. The literature on this relationship in the developed world suggested a shift from a negative relationship to a weakening negative or even a positive relationship. This is explained by the decreasing role incompatibility between working and mothering caused by changes in the societal response and institutional context. The evidence from developing countries, on the other hand, indicates a less clear picture due to slow or ongoing demographic transition. In this paper, we look at the mechanisms underlying the relationship between fertility and employment of women in a developing country context: Turkey, using data from 2008 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS-2008). It is the first TDHS survey, which included employment histories of ever-married women. Using event history analyses, we investigate determinants of becoming pregnant given non-pregnancy, entering employment given non-employment, and exiting employment given employment, separately. The methodology is hazard modeling where piece-wise constant exponential models are applied. Our analyses suggest that risks of all conceptions of different orders are higher for non- employed women compared to their employed counterparts. On the other hand, not parity but pregnancy or existence an infant child increases the risk of exiting employment. Finally both parity and young children keep women away from the labor market in Turkey. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Fertility; employment; women; Turkey * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-312-305-1115; fax: +90-312- 311-8141. E-mail address: ayse.ozgoren@hacettepe.edu.tr
- 102. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 88 1. Introduction The possible conflict between working and mothering roles has been studied in the literature thoroughly to investigate the decline in fertility due to demographic transition. This study aims to analyze the linkages between women’s employment and fertility in Turkey using event history analyses and 2008 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey. Previous studies on this topic are mostly at the macro level, descriptive and fail to explain the complex mechanisms underlying childbearing and women’s employment. Two important contributions of this paper are that it is at the micro level and in the context of a developing country like Turkey. The causality between fertility and female labor force participation (FLFP) may be one way or both ways (Narayan & Smyth, 2006, p. 564-565): In this regard there are the Role Incompatibility and the Societal Response Hypothesis. The first one states that the negative correlation between fertility and FLFP is due to the conflicts between the productive and reproductive roles of women (Hossain & Tisdell, 2005). The second one states that changing attitudes towards working mothers increased availability of childcare and paid maternity leave which reduced the incompatibility between childbearing and FLFP in most developed countries. The first hypothesis argues that the negative relationship occurs only when the roles of worker and mother conflict which is determined by the organization of production, and the organization of childcare (Mason & Palan, 1981). The role incompatibility hypothesis is expected to be more relevant in the context of a developing country where the childcare facilities outside home are almost non-existent or deficient. However level of industrialization and urbanization are other important factors affecting the relevancy of the role incompatibility theory in a developing country context. A review of literature based on cross-sectional data suggests that although the inverse relationship between fertility and FLFP was found in developed countries in the 1980s, it tended to be weak or absent in the developing countries (Concepcion, 1974). First study focusing solely on the relationship between worker and mother roles in Turkey is Stycos and Weller (1967). They use data from a survey carried out in 1963 in both rural and urban areas. They control for residence, employment status, education and exposure to contraception within marriage, and find no difference by employment status regarding fertility. They find differential fertility which is associated with residence and education rather than labor force status. This finding is consistent with role incompatibility theory of no relationship between employment and fertility of women when mother-worker roles are compatible. İsvan (1991) is another pioneering study. It considers women’s relative power in the domestic decision process and their autonomy as additional factors affecting the employment-fertility relationship and their relative strength depends on the cultural context. In this non-neoclassical approach she assumes that the household is a democratic and/or consensual unit. She uses the 1968 Survey of Family Structure and Population of 4,500 households conducted by Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies (HUIPS). The dependent variable is the months between the last birth and the date of the interview which is an inverse measure of recent fertility. She considers reproductive, social and economic decision powers separately and an index of domestic autonomy. She finds that when the level of autonomy is controlled for, the power variables have no significant effect on the strength of employment- fertility relationship. In contrast, Abbasoğlu (2009) uses 1968-2006 time series data to investigate the link between fertility and FLFP in Turkey using Johansen-Juselius approach. She finds an inverse long-run and a negative feedback relationship between fertility and FLFP in a multivariate setting including infant mortality, and female illiteracy. In addition to these studies, two recent studies appear on directly the relationship between fertility and childbearing in Turkey: Şengül and Kıral (2006)’s study on analyzing the effect of decisions of fertility (measured as total number of children and number of children younger than 7 years old) on female labor force participation using sex of first child as the instrument. They use data from Household Labor Force Survey from the first quarter of 2003. They find that children, especially presence of young children decrease the probability of working of women in Turkey.
- 103. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 89 Finally, Sevinç (2011) uses the sex of first, second and third child, and twin births in total births as instruments. He uses the 1993, 1998 and 2003 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) of HUIPS. Considering the urban ever-married women, he uses several binary indicators of labor force status as dependent variable. He finds mixed results depending on the instrument. The twin-birth instrument implies a negative and strong(er than OLS) causal effect of fertility on labor supply of women. The present study aims to provide more insight to the linkages between fertility and FLFP in Turkey using TDHS-2008. 2. The data and the methodology We use TDHS of 2008 (TDHS-2008) which includes the employment histories of ever-married women for the first time in addition to their birth and marriage histories with retrospective information. It has a weighted, multistage, stratified cluster design. There are 10,525 completed household interviews and 7,405 completed individual interviews with ever-married women of 15-49 years old sing event history analyses, we investigate determinants of becoming pregnant given non-pregnancy, entering employment given non-employment, and exiting employment given employment, separately to analyze the linkages between women’s employment and fertility decisions.. The observation window opens with the first marriage of the woman and closes at the interview or emigration date if life history of the woman includes this. We use hazard approach with piece-wise constant exponential modelling. Specifically, the model is given by: ℎ(𝑡|𝑥𝑗) = ℎ0(𝑡)𝑒𝑥𝑝( 𝑥𝑗 𝛽𝑥) (1) where h0(t) is the baseline hazard function, xj is the vector of control variables and βx is the corresponding vector of the parameters showing the effects of control. We analyze the determinants of conception, entering employment and exiting employment. There are separate models depending on the conception order. Employment and non-employment models differ depending on the variable of fertility used. The fertility models consider the first conception risk since start of first marriage, second conception risk since first birth, third conception risk since second birth, and finally higher order conception risks since previous birth. Date of pregnancy is measured as 7 months before the date of (live) birth. The baseline is the duration since first marriage or first birth or second birth or previous birth depending on the model. Time-fixed variables are age at start of the conception risk. Other covariates include mother tongue, parental education and employment status before marriage. For the multi- episode model of higher order conceptions, the order of conception is also used as an additional time-fixed covariate. Time-varying covariates are calendar year, educational level, urban/rural place of residence, region, marital status and the e employment status. Expanded models are also estimated based on job characteristics such as sector of work, public/private employment, wage/non-wage status and presence of social security coverage. Employment (non-employment) models include cumulative measures such as number of years of work experience (years of non-employment) after marriage and parity or age of the youngest child. We provide the following explanations for the variables. Calendar year shows the trend in the event of interest over time. In general, it is constructed as 7-year intervals. Last calendar period is the reference since we would like to interpret the results relative to the most recent period. The employment of women is a dummy variable as employed or non- employed. We also experimented with an expanded model where several employment status variables are included such as agriculture versus non-agriculture, public versus private, wage status of employment and social security coverage. The basic time factor is the duration since the beginning of the episode. Age at start of the episode is a time-fixed variable, which is the age at the onset of the risk in general with five- year intervals. Employment status before marriage is a time fixed dummy variable indicating whether woman ever worked before marriage or not. Mother tongue is a time-fixed proxy for ethnicity indicating Turkish, Kurdish, and other languages. Parental education indicates whether mother and father has no education or primary incomplete or they are educated. We assume that the education of the individual starts at the age of 6 and continues with no interruptions. Based on historical data for migration, we have urban/rural residence and
- 104. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 90 region variables as time varying. The five regions are West, South, Central, North, and East. Those who emigrated or those who were abroad when the episode started are excluded. Another time-varying covariate, marital status has three categories as separated which include not living together divorced or widowed, first marriage and later marriages. The model for the fourth and higher order conceptions further includes a variable on next conception order in addition to the variables with categories of fourth, fifth, and sixth and higher order conception. Employment model analyzes the event of job exits and include the similar explanatory variables with following additions. Age at start of employment is a time-fixed variable. Work experience after marriage is a time-varying covariate and crucial in human capital models. Here, the variables of interest are fertility-related variables such as the parity and the age of the youngest child. The multi-episode non-employment model analyzes the event of entering employment from non-employment and involves explanatory variables similar to the employment model with the following differences. It excludes job characteristics, the order of the episode in this case is the order of non-employment and experience is the non-employment experience after marriage. The experience variables start from marriage since marriage is a significant turning point in women’s lives in Turkey and exiting employment after marriage is common. 3. The empirical results Table 1 presents the results for multivariate models of fertility. The results indicate that in past calendar periods the risk of conceiving a child is higher, which is more pronounced for transition to the parities of two and over. The calendar time effect includes changes in proximate determinants of fertility as well as population policies in Turkey such as Population Planning Law of 1965 and Family Planning Law of 1983, which are expected to play a role in declines in the risks of having second or higher births. The first model indicates that at the age at first marriage of 17-21 the likelihood of conceiving the first child peaks. The results differ for higher order conceptions. Risk of having higher order births is higher in younger age groups compared to 17-21 or 20-24 age group. This may be due to once the woman has first birth at a young age; transition to the next one takes place also at a young age. Our main interest is in the effect of employment on fertility. These results show that non- employed women have 1.13 times more risk of having first birth compared to employed women. The hazard ratios are 1.12, 1.10 and 1.14 for having second birth, third birth, and fourth and higher order births, respectively. The fertility effects of other covariates are as follows. Employment before marriage does not seem to play an important role in the likelihood of transitions to first or higher order births. In Turkey, women’s jobs in general have inferior characteristics. They are mostly employed as unpaid family worker or in jobs with no social security coverage. Moreover this employment is interrupted by marriage which is a very influential factor of quitting job among women. Hence, employment status before marriage is not expected to affect future fertility. Ethnicity proxied by mother tongue is effective after first conception implying higher likelihoods of second or higher order births for Kurdish women and women of other ethnicities compared to Turkish women. Parental education is a factor affecting all transitions to parities with higher likelihoods for uneducated parents compared to educated parents. The situation is more pronounced for higher order births. Among background variables, education is another important factor affecting transition to motherhood and having higher order parities. Less education means higher risk of entering motherhood or having more births. This, as well, is more prevalent in transitions to higher order births. The spatial control factors are important in the context of studying the links running from employment status to fertility behaviors. In rural areas, women are 1.5 times more likely to have fourth or higher order birth compared to women in urban areas. Women living in regions other than West are more likely to have second or third births. However for fourth or higher order births the region variable is not influential. The multivariate results imply lower birth risks for separated women and higher birth risks for women in later marriages compared to women in their first marriage.
- 105. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 91 Table 1 Relative risks of conceptions, Turkey 1972-2008 First conc. Second conc. Third conc. 4th & higher conc. Duration since start of episode (Baseline) 0-1 years 1 1 1 1 1-2 years 0.77*** 1.67*** 1.68*** 1.44*** 2-3 years 0.54*** 1.72*** 1.51*** 1.09 3-4 years 0.46*** 1.85*** 1.42*** 0.95 4-5 years 0.36*** 2.09*** 1.50*** 0.72*** 5-7 years 0.22*** 1.64*** 1.17* 0.67*** 7-10 years 0.13*** 1.31*** 0.84 0.32*** 10+ years 0.07*** 0.30*** 0.23*** 0.08*** Calendar years 1972-1980a , 1973-1981b , 1975-1981c , 1977-1981d 1.17** 2.16*** 2.45*** 1.75* 1981-1987a , 1982-1988b,c,d, 1.14*** 1.69*** 1.95*** 1.88*** 1988-1994a , 1989-1995b,c,d 1.16*** 1.53*** 1.32*** 1.49*** 1995-2001a , 1996-2002b,c,d 1.17*** 1.38*** 1.26*** 1.47*** 2002-2008a , 2003-2008b,c,d 1 1 1 1 Age at start of episode 12-16a, b , 13-19c , 14-19d 0.81*** 1.02 1.20*** 1.21** 17-21a, b , 20-24c, d 1 1 1 1 22-26a, b, 25-29c, d 0.95 0.93** 0.70*** 0.74*** 27-31a, b , 30-34c, d 0.74*** 0.69*** 0.38*** 0.43*** 32-46a , 32-44b , 35-41c , 35-46d 0.55*** 0.45*** 0.38*** 0.25*** Employment status Non-employed 1.13*** 1.12** 1.10* 1.14*** Employed 1 1 1 1 Employment before marriage Non-employed 1.00 1.02 0.99 0.96 Employed 1 1 1 1 Mother tongue Turkish 1 1 1 1 Kurdish 0.99 1.22*** 1.59*** 1.59*** Other 1.09 1.28*** 1.44*** 1.55*** Parental education Mother and father uneducatede 1.09* 1.32*** 1.34*** 1.44*** One educated other uneducated 1.15*** 1.18*** 1.28*** 1.26** Mother and father educated 1 1 1 1 Education No education or primary incomplete 0.91 2.19*** 2.72*** 2.20*** Primary level 1.15*** 1.71*** 1.68*** 1.64*** Secondary level 1.10 1.27*** 1.14 1.29 High school or higher level 1 1 1 1 In education 0.76 1.10 0.00*** Type of place of residence Urban 1 1 1 1 Rural 0.94* 1.16*** 1.20*** 1.48*** Region West 1 1 1 1 South 1.04 1.33*** 1.49*** 1.15 Central 1.15*** 1.34*** 1.57*** 1.11 North 1.02 1.36*** 1.49*** 1.15 East 1.10* 1.56*** 1.89*** 1.63*** Marital status Separated 0.04*** 0.06*** 0.08*** 0.07*** First marriage 1 1 1 1 Later marriages 1.58* 1.42*** 1.12 1.53*** Order of conception Fourth 1 Fifth 1.00 Sixth or higher order 1.17*** * 10 %; ** 5 %; *** 1 %, a First conception model, b Second conception model, c Third conception model, d Fourth and higher order conceptions model, e Uneducated: None or primary incomplete; educated: Primary complete or above Results for the expanded models for births are provided in Table 2. This table shows results for four separate models. The results suggest that the sector of employment has a crucial role in transition to motherhood or higher order births. Women working in agricultural sector have higher risks for conceptions compared to women working in non-agricultural sector. The risk ratios indicate that the non-employment effect is very similar to agriculture sector effect.
- 106. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 92 Table 2 Relative risks of conceptions by type of employment, Turkey 1972-2008a First conception Second conception Third conception Fourth and higher order conceptions Sector Agriculture 1.34*** 1.13 1.31** 1.37*** Non-agriculture 1 1 1 1 Non-employed 1.32*** 1.20*** 1.32*** 1.47*** Public versus private Public 0.98 1.20* 0.57** 0.77 Private 1 1 1 1 Non-employed 1.13*** 1.14*** 1.07 1.13** Status Wage earner 1 1 1 1 Non-wage earner 1.25*** 1.06 1.29*** 0.87* Other 1.00 1.67 1.69 1.43* Non-employed 1.27*** 1.16** 1.31*** 1.04 Social security Uncovered 1.40*** 1.13 1.40* 1.68* Covered 1 1 1 1 Non-employed 1.42*** 1.23*** 1.49** 1.88** a Separate models where other covariates and explanatory variables are controlled for. * 10 %; ** 5 %; *** 1 % The public sector employment effects are statistically significant only for the second and third conception indicating higher and lower risks, respectively. Ma (2013) finds in South Korea that public sector provides a favorable environment for entry into motherhood. These may include social insurance, stability and regularity, and guaranteed job after childbearing when they return to the labor market. We observe a similar finding in transition to second conception only. Wage status is effective in transitions to first, third and higher order births, separately. Working as a non-wage earner increases the likelihood of transition to first and third births. These are not similar to Ma (2013)’s findings on South Korea. She finds non-wage earners are less likely to enter motherhood than wage earners employed in the public sector. In contrast, we find that non-wage earners are 1.3 times more likely to enter motherhood than wage-earners. Social security coverage of the job is an important factor in all models. Working in an uncovered job is associated with higher risk of having births. The hazard ratio reaches 1.7 for uncovered women compared to their covered counterparts for fourth and higher order conceptions. Next, we present results of two models of transition from employment to non-employment based on parity model and age of youngest child model. In Table 3, the results show that it has been less likely in past calendar year periods to exit a job compared to the 2003-2008 period. This indicates importance of external or macro-economic factors on job market. During periods of economic crises in Turkey women enter employment. When the effects of the economic crises weaken; the labor force participation rates of women decline again. 2003-2008 has been a period of recovery from the 2001 economic crisis and the labor force participation rates of women remained at relatively low levels (Özdemir & Dündar, 2012) with more frequent job exits. As expected, we find that younger age groups are more likely to quit jobs compared to the age group of 22-26. They may be working during education and before marriage. Having no child increases the risk of exiting employment compared to having one child, and having two children decreases this risk. This indicates that once women establish themselves in the labor market even if they have more kids they do not exit the labor market. The child-age model implies that being pregnant increases the likelihood of exiting employment the most compared to having an infant. As in the previous model having no child increases the risk of job exits. If the youngest child is older than 1 year then the risk of exiting employment is lower than that of a woman with an infant. Age of the youngest child gives more
- 107. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 93 information about the linkages running from fertility to employment. Pregnancy encourages job exits significantly whereas parity variable does not play a significant role. On the other hand age of the youngest child is an influential variable that provides support for the role incompatibility hypothesis. Considering the welfare state context of Turkey these findings are reasonable. Presence of young children appears to be a reason for women to exit employment. The results for the main control variables are as follows. Mother tongue is not associated with job exits. Having one parent rather than two parents educated is associated with increased risk of exiting employment. Lower education levels are associated with higher likelihood of exiting jobs. These may be due to the inferior conditions of jobs for less educated women. “In education” category is also associated with higher job exits compared to high school or higher level of education as expected. Women living in rural areas have lower hazard of job exits than women living in urban areas. Women living in regions other than the West have a lower hazard of job exits than women living in the West. In the agricultural sector the risk to exit employment is lower than in non- agricultural sector as expected. Social security coverage seems to play no role in the risk of job exits. Table 3 presents the results of the model for job entry as well. We observe that risk for employment entries is lower in the past calendar years. In the most recent calendar year there are more job exits and job entries which imply an increased turnover recently compared to the past. These findings indicate flexible labor market conditions for women in Turkey. As expected risk of entering employment is less among women of age 27-49 compared to age 22-26. Women with parities higher than one are less likely to exit non-employment compared to women with parity one as presumed by the role incompatibility hypothesis. Pregnancy is associated with less employment entries as expected. On the other hand, having no child and/or having child older than one year are associated with higher likelihood to exit non-employment as expected. Pregnancy appears to be an obstacle to enter employment overall. These findings imply that pregnancy and presence of young children restrain women from entering employment in line with role incompatibility hypothesis. Table 3 Relative risks of job exits and job entries, Turkey 1972-2008 Transition from Employment to non-employment Non-employment to employment Parity model Child-age model Parity model Child-age model Duration since start of episode (Baseline) 0-1 years 1 1 1 1 1-2 years 0.97 0.94 0.56*** 0.61*** 2-3 years 0.83 0.80* 0.42*** 0.42*** 3-4 years 0.62*** 0.60*** 0.42*** 0.39*** 4-5 years 0.53*** 0.50*** 0.32*** 0.28*** 5-7 years 0.45*** 0.43*** 0.34*** 0.27*** 7-10 years 0.37*** 0.34*** 0.36*** 0.25*** 10+ years 0.32*** 0.29*** 0.45*** 0.26*** Calendar year 1971-1988a, 1959-1988b 0.50*** 0.48*** 0.69*** 0.73*** 1989-1995 0.49*** 0.48*** 0.61*** 0.62*** 1996-2002 0.73*** 0.73*** 0.82*** 0.83*** 2003-2008 1 1 1 1 Age at start of episode 12-16 1.42*** 1.44*** 1.11 1.13 17-21 1.14 1.14 1.02 1.05 22-26 1 1 1 1 27-49 0.99 0.92 0.70*** 0.60*** a Employment to non-employment model, b non-employment to employment model
- 108. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 94 Table 3 Relative risks of job exits and job entries, Turkey 1972-2008 (continued) Transition from Employment to non-employment Non-employment to employment Parity model Child-age model Parity model Child-age model Parity 0 1.73*** 1.00 1 1 1 2 0.84* 0.82** 3 0.94 0.78** 4+ 0.98 0.60*** Age of youngest child no child 1.40** 1.73*** pregnant 2.55*** 0.68*** 0 years 1 1 1-2 years 0.68** 1.50*** 3-5 years 0.87 1.81*** 6-8 years 0.98 2.40*** 9+ years 1.06 1.89*** Mother tongue Turkish 1 1 1 1 Kurdish 1.03 1.03 0.73** 0.74** Other 1.06 1.07 1.05 1.06 Parental education Mother and father uneducatedc 1.04 1.02 0.83** 0.82** Mother or father educated 1.17* 1.14 0.87* 0.87* Mother and father educated 1 1 1 1 Education No education or primary incomplete 1.15 1.10 0.56*** 0.52*** Primary level 1.28** 1.22* 0.64*** 0.63*** Secondary level 1.74*** 1.66*** 0.63*** 0.62*** High school or higher level 1 1 1 1 In education 1.64 1.86 1.55 1.44 Type of place of residence Urban 1 1 1 1 Rural 0.51*** 0.51*** 1.27*** 1.27*** Region West 1 1 1 1 South 0.90 0.88 0.70*** 0.70*** Central 0.73*** 0.72*** 0.58*** 0.58*** North 0.58*** 0.57*** 1.00 1.00 East 0.78** 0.76** 0.41*** 0.41*** Marital status Separated 1.11 1.16 2.05*** 1.96*** First marriage 1 1 1 1 Later marriages 0.87 0.87 0.93 0.99 Work experiencea or years of non-employmentb after marriage 0 years 1 1 1 1 1 year 1.09 1.09 0.75 0.69 2-4 years 1.00 0.99 1.15 1.00 5+ years 0.86 0.83 2.35*** 1.84*** Sector of job Agriculture 0.41*** 0.41*** Non-agriculture 1 1 Social security coverage of job Covered 1 1 Uncovered 1.05 1.02 Order of joba or order of non-employment episodeb First 1 1 1 1 Second 0.97 0.96 1.56*** 1.51*** Third 1.18 1.20 1.87*** 1.80*** Fourth and higher order 1.13 1.16 2.89*** 2.64*** a Employment to non-employment model, b non-employment to employment model, c Uneducated: None or primary incomplete; educated: Primary complete or above 4. Discussion The linkages between women’s employment and fertility have been studied mostly in developed country contexts within the frameworks of role incompatibility hypothesis and societal response hypothesis. The literature on this relationship in the developed world suggests a shift from a negative relationship to a weakening negative or even a positive relationship. This development was explained by the decreasing role incompatibility between
- 109. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 95 working and mothering caused by changes in the societal response and institutional context, i.e. welfare state structure. The evidence from developing countries, on the other hand, indicates a less clear picture due to slow or ongoing demographic transition. In this paper, we examine the relationship between fertility and employment of women in a developing country context: Turkey. In Turkey both the total fertility rate and the female labor force participation rate have been declining over time. A priori it is not possible to say whether or not the role incompatibility is supported in Turkey. There are two opposing forces. The passive family policies and male- breadwinner model widespread in Turkey suggest support for the role incompatibility. However women experience high unemployment rates and they work in inferior jobs with no wage and no social security. Thus the flexible working conditions and increased job turnover would favor the role compatibility on the other hand. This is supported by the values and norms in the country as well. In Turkey both men and women perceive men’s employment as more important than women’s. However these linkages are highly dependent on economic conditions, i.e. living standards. Thus, how the context is reflected in the mechanisms running from employment to fertility, and vice versa is the question we sought to find an answer empirically using Turkish data. We find support for role incompatibility hypothesis in Turkey. Our multivariate event history analyses of fertility suggest that risks of all conceptions of different orders are higher for non-employed women compared to their employed counterparts. Our expanded fertility models indicate that working in the agricultural sector is almost equivalent to being non-employed in terms of its risks of childbearing. Working in the public sector is associated with higher risk of second conception but lower risk of third conception compared to working in the private sector. Being non-wage earner increases the risk of conception except for fourth and higher order. Finally working in a job without any social security increases the risk of conception. The linkages running from employment status to fertility show having no child increases the risk of exiting employment and having two or more children decrease the risk compared to having one child. This implies that once women establish themselves in the labor market, even if they have more kids, they do not exit the labor market. Pregnant women or women with infants have higher risks of employment exits. According to the non-employment (job entry) model, parity also affects the risk of transition. More children imply less job entries. Number of children, pregnancy and presence of young children prevent women from entering employment. The calendar period variable implies less employment barriers in the labor market for women. The low employment rate of women in Turkey is an important issue to address. The conditions of labor demand should aim employment of non-employed women. Results for groups of pregnant women and childless women need further attention. Childless women have the highest rates of job turnover that is risk of job entry and exit. Pregnant women are the most disadvantaged group. If they are employed, the risk of job exit is the highest for them and if non-employed the risk of job entry is the lowest for them. We can conclude that our study finds evidence for the role incompatibility hypothesis in Turkey. Employment decreases the risk of childbearing. On the other hand, not parity but pregnancy and existence of infants increases the risk of exiting employment. Finally both parity and young children keep women away from the labor market in Turkey Our study has important implications. We find that the macro context can be influential shaping the relationship between fertility and employment in a developing country. One limitation of this study is that explaining micro linkages with macro variables is kept at descriptive level. Future studies can address the impact of context on work and family reconciliation. This could be done either in a cross-country perspective or in another developing country. It is an interesting question whether developing countries that have not completed demographic transition will experience the same fertility-female employment relationship as their developed counterparts in the future.
- 110. Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören, BanuErgöçmen, Aysıt Tansel / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 96 Acknowledgements This paper forms a part of the PhD thesis of Ayşe Abbasoğlu-Özgören prepared under the supervision of Banu Ergöçmen and Aysıt Tansel. A major empirical part of the thesis was carried out during a research visit of Ms. Abbasoğlu-Özgören at Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) funded by the scholarship from TUBITAK with 2214/A International Doctoral Research Fellowship. She is grateful to TUBITAK for the support, SUDA for their hospitality and Gunnar Andersson for his technical supervision. References Abbasoğlu, A. (2009). Investigating the Causality between Female Labour Force Participation and Fertility in Turkey (Unpublished master’s thesis). HUIPS, Ankara. Concepcion, M. B. (1974). Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility. International Labor Review, 109(5/6), 503‐517. Hossain, M., & Tisdell, C. (2005). Fertility and female labour force participation in Bangladesh: Causality and cointegration. Asian-African Journal of Economics and Econometrics, 5(1), 67-82. İsvan, N. A. (1991). Productive and Reproductive Decisions in Turkey: The Role of Domestic Bargaining. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53(4), 1057-1070. Ma, L. (2013). Employment and motherhood entry in South Korea, 1978-2003. Population-E, 68(3): 419-446. Mason, K. O., & Palan, V. T. (1981). Female Employment and Fertility in Peninsular Malaysia: The Maternal Role Incompatibility Hypothesis Reconsidered. Demography, 18(4), 549-575. Narayan, P. K., & Smyth, R. (2006). Female labour force participation, fertility and infant mortality in Australia: Some empirical evidence from Granger causality tests. Applied Economics, 38(5), 563-572. Özdemir, D., & Dündar, H. Ç. (2012). Türkiye’nin Kriz Sonrası Eve Dönen Kadınları: İşgücüne Katılımda Kriz Etkisi ve Fırsat Maliyeti. TEPAV Değerlendirme Notu, Ağustos2012 N201240. Sevinç, O. (2011). Effect of Fertility on Female Labor Supply in Turkey (Unpublished master’s thesis). Middle East Technical University, Department of Economics, Ankara. Stycos, J. M., & Weller, R. H. (1967). Female Working Roles and Fertility. Demography, 4(1), 210-217. Şengül, S., & Kıral, G. (2006). Türkiye’de Kadının İşgücü Pazarına Katılım ve Doğurganlık Kararları [Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility Decisions of Women in Turkey]. T.C. Atatürk Üniversitesi Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences, 20(1), 89-104.
- 111. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 97 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Solidarity Issues in Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın* Gazi University, Women’s Studies and Research Center, Turkey Abstract Domestic violence against women is analyzed in this study in the context of its relation with solidarity patterns which enable the protection of the family as an institution. If solidarity is defined as a social cohesion and a cooperation and collective action for a particular purpose of a group, then it may have positive effects for the said group. However, if solidarity is achieved through the violation of the basic human rights and freedoms, then it may have negative consequences for those who believe that the basic human rights and freedoms are inalienable. Accordingly, this study argues that solidarity patterns which enable the protection of the family as an institution through the violation of the basic individual rights and freedoms of women are dynamics of domestic violence against women. The theoretical purpose of the study is to evaluate the concept of solidarity from a critical point of view in terms of the violation of the basic human rights and freedoms. The practical purpose of the study is to find out under which circumstances the solidarity patterns lead to domestic violence against women. The data were collected through qualitative field research, in-depth semi structured interviews with 32 women staying in a women’s shelter. The findings indicate that the solidarity patterns which lead to domestic violence against women are constructed by bundles of relationships, including even women who are the victims of domestic violence. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Domestic violence, women, family, solidarity patterns, Turkey * Corresponding Author. E-mail address: ayseaydin@gazi.edu.tr, aaysea@gmail.com
- 112. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 98 1. Introduction Today in Turkey domestic violence against women has reached such a serious level that even those who generally ignore the women’s human rights cannot disregard it. Almost daily cases of femicide are the most concrete evidence of the current situation of domestic violence against women in Turkey. In parallel to the increasing number of cases of domestic violence against women, efforts to combat and to eliminate it have also increased, especially in recent years. New policies are established, new laws are implemented, lots of conferences, workshops, congresses etc. are held, lots of researches are conducted, lots of books and articles are written and published, at universities new programs on gender and women’s studies are opened and so on. However remarkable results indicating that domestic violence against women is getting decrease have not been reached yet. On the contrary unofficial statistics reveal that there is an increase in the number of femicide cases, ultimate form of violence against women. For example according to We Will Stop Femicide Platform’s statistics, last year, in 2014, 294 women were killed by their intimates. And in the first 8 month of 2015, 182 women were killed (http://kadincinayetlerinidurduracagiz.net/veriler/2349/agustos-2015- kadin-cinayeti-gercekleri). It is also known that most of the women were killed when they attempted to make their own decisions about their own lives. So, the present situation can be explained like this: On the one hand there is an increasing struggle to combat and to eliminate domestic violence against women and on the other hand there is an increasing number of cases of domestic violence against women. Then, it seems, there is a paradox here. How this paradox can be explained in a rational manner? What are the gaps between the studies on domestic violence against women and reality? How these gaps can be filled to find permanent and sustainable solutions for elimination of domestic violence against women? At this point, in order to find reasonable answers to these questions it might be useful to review the results of the previous researches on violence against women from a different point of view. In this context, some common results obtained from different researches on violence against women are summarized below: Men hold the power within the family as a reflection of patriarchal power relations in society. So, force/violence used by men against family members is legitimate in the event that it is considered necessary to do so (Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998). Honor of family legitimizes the violence against women. Accordingly, a woman’s “dishonorable behaviors” are not accepted and are shamed and blamed even by other women. Therefore, violence against women for their “dishonorable behaviors” is regarded as legitimate (Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998; Başbakanlık Aile Araştırma Kurumu [AAK], 1995). Women victims of domestic violence generally try to keep their family together rather than move away. In some events, women victims of violence believe that they are responsible for the violence they suffer. Moreover they accept and internalized violence and learn to live with it (İçli, 1994; AAK 1995; Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998, Gülçür, 1999). In accordance with traditional gender roles, family members and relatives of women victims of violence persuade them to keep their family together (AAK 1995; Yıldırım, 1998; Gülçür, 1999; Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü [KSGM], 2009). In accordance with a traditional common belief, violence within the family should be kept secret from outsiders (İçli, 1994; AAK, 1995; Rittersberger-Tılıç, 1998; Gülçür 1999).
- 113. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 99 Women victims of violence generally do not report the violence against them to the police. In some cases battered women who called the police withdraw their complaints because of various reasons. Moreover in most cases relevant institutions and officials responsible for the prevention of violence against women are unwilling to help the battered women. Instead they persuade them to return their homes. (İstanbul Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Ceza Hukuku ve Kriminolojik Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi, 2003; Yıldırım, 1998; Gülçür, 1999; Sallan Gül, 2011). Research results summarized above indicate some mechanisms, directly or indirectly, which lead to the production and/or reproduction of domestic violence against women. Accordingly, violation of family honor because of “dishonorable behaviors” of women can be a direct legitimate ground for domestic violence against women. Besides, encouragement of women victims of domestic violence by their relatives to stay at their homes and keep their family together can be an indirect legitimate ground for the reproduction of domestic violence against women. Then, for the argument of this study, these results can be explained at the same time as solidarity patterns which enable the protection of family through the production and reproduction of traditional family values leading to the violation of women’s human rights. So what is solidarity? How a concept which is almost always is used for explaining the situations related with harmony and unity rather than conflict and dispute can be used to explain the causes and effects of domestic violence against women? 2. The Concept of Solidarity as a Theoretical Background The concept of solidarity, from a first impression, is associated with harmony, cooperativeness and unity in every situation and for every person. In fact solidarity is generally defined as a social cohesion and a cooperation and collective action for a particular purpose of a group (Theodorson & Theodorson, 1979). According to this definition it can be said that no group can exist without solidarity relationships among its members and moreover solidarity has positive effects for both the group members and the group itself. In line with these explanations on solidarity, it can be argued that so-called honor killing is an example of solidarity shown among the family members and relatives of the victim. The reason is that so-called honor killing is carried out through a decision taken jointly by the victim’s family members and relatives aiming to punish the victim for her “dishonorable behaviors” and to restore family’s honor. In this sense cooperation and consensus among the family members and relatives are typical solidarity patterns which have positive effects for the family to the extent that the aim is achieved. However can it be possible to argue that this kind of solidarity has positive consequences in every situation and for every person? The answer of this question is definitely NO at least for those who believe that the basic human rights and freedoms are inalienable. Thus, it is thought that the concept of solidarity is not so innocent and therefore it should be analyzed from a critical point of view in studies on domestic violence against women in terms of the violation of women’s human rights. 3. Method Since the common definition of the concept of solidarity firstly brings positive implications to mind it could be difficult to establish the relationship between violence against women and the solidarity patterns which enable the protection of the family. Therefore in this study the qualitative data analysis was used in order not to be misled by outward observation and in order to reach the reality hidden by “deeper structures and forces that may lie unseen beneath the surface” (Neuman, 2006). Accordingly, in this study, by using
- 114. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 100 qualitative research method techniques, it is aimed to reach the unseen realities of the relationships between domestic violence against women and the solidarity patterns which enable the protection of the family as an institution. Moreover, in the process of data analysis, the principle indicates that “data analysis means a search for patterns in data–recurrent behaviors, objects, phases, or, ideas” (Neuman, 2006) was taken into consideration. Thus, in this research solidarity patterns, in the form of recurrent ideas, behaviors, actions which enable the protection of family through the violation of women’s human rights are mainly searched. The data were collected through qualitative field research, in-depth semi structured interviews with 32 women staying in Çankaya Municipality Women’s Shelter. The real names of the interviewees are not given. Instead, nicknames are used. The interviewees were accepted as “active participants whose insights, feelings, and cooperation were essential parts of a discussion process that reveals subjective meanings” (Neuman, 2006). Accordingly, some interview questions were reviewed and updated during the field research in accordance with the specific evaluations of the women victims of violence related to their violence experiences. Thus, each interview and the field research itself was “a joint production of” (Neuman 2006) the researcher and the interviewees. 4. Results The interview questions were classified for data analysis in two main categories as violence and family. The subcategories of under the main category of violence are classified respectively as the definition, justification and internalization of violence. The definition of family, hegemonic masculinity, patriarchal barging, patriarchal terrorism and coercive control, and learned helplessness are the subcategories of the main category of family. In this paper, some of the research results are summarized under three following categories: 4.1. Solidarity patterns produced by the family members and/or relatives of the women victims of domestic violence The interviewees were asked the reactions and attitudes of their family members and relatives to the violence they suffered. According to the answers, at least one family member or relative of the almost all the women victims of domestic violence (%93, 5) persuades them not to leave from their home and keep their family together. One of the main reasons is that women have children. It means they are mothers. And mothers should tolerate even the violence they suffer for the wellbeing of their children. Oya† , 31years old, with one child, describes shortly how her close relatives persuade her not to leave her husband: “… Be patient, bear with him, endure the violence, you have a child…” Rana, 34 years old, with four children, also tells how she was tried to convince not to leave her home by her family members and relatives: “… Tolerate him for the sake of your children. Wait until your daughters become brides and your sons complete their education… ” Sinem, 24 years old, with two children, describes a similar experience: “… My mother said, be patient my daughter, you have two children, be patient…” Another reason of trying to persuade the battered women to tolerate the violence and not to leave from their homes is based on some typical traditional values. That is a married woman first and above all is a † The names are not real.
- 115. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 101 wife rather than an independent individual. So the right place of a married woman is her husband’s home. And she must stay there even she is subjected to violence by her husband. Gönül, 28 years old, with one child, tells how her relatives try to keep her family together: “… Let’s save this family, there is a child, there is a home, let’s save it and, let’s give his wife back to him…” Ela, 23 years old, with two children, explains how her mother and aunt do not pay to attention the violence she suffered by her husband and persuade her to keep her family together: “… Firstly I told my aunt, and she said, it is not so important, we also are beaten, what is the problem. Do whatever he wants. I said, no, I am not his slave. And my aunt said, you will be [his slave], he is your husband, if he beats you even he kills you. Then I told my mother, and my mother said, it is not important, your father also beats me…” Meltem, 31 years old, with two children, has similar experience with her sisters and brothers: “… My brothers and my sisters too, said, you went there [husband’s home] with your wedding dress and you will return with your shroud, this suits us...” The above explanations indicate that, convincing or forcing women victims of domestic violence by their family members and/or relatives not to leave their husbands and keep their family together lead to reproduction violence against women. However, the explanations also indicate that convincing or forcing battered women not to leave their husbands and keep their family together strengthens the traditional family values in the form of solidarity patterns which on the one hand enable the protection of the family but on the other hand reproduce violence against women. Accordingly, repetitive expressions like “be patient”, “endure the violence”,” tolerate him for the sake of your children”, “let’s save the family”, “you went there with your wedding dress and you will return with your shroud”, “we are also beaten, what is the problem” are solidarity patterns which enable the protection of family through the violation of women’s human rights. 4.2. Solidarity patterns produced by the police responsible for prevention of violence against women The interviewees were also asked the attitudes of the police when they call for help. According to the answers 28 women out of 30 (%93) called the police for help at least once. The 20 women who called the police said some of the police officers have an attitude that domestic violence against women is a part of family relationships. Ece, 19 years old, with one child, explains her experience with the police: “… I went to the police station. Most of the police officers there knew my husband. They asked me how I could endure him. But there was an old one. He said, you are a married woman, you should endure him. Today’s women leave their husbands for even just a slap…” Deniz, 34 years old, with two children explains the attitudes of the police toward her: “… One day the police came to our house for routine control. They asked me if I had any problem with my husband. I said no. In that time my husband got better a little bit. One of the police officers said, what will you do if he does not get better? Do you have any financial power? No. So you should endure him…” Burçin, 23 years old, with one child, tells how the police officers tried to convince her to forgive her husband: “… I didn’t go to the police station near our house. Because all the police officers there knew my husband and I was afraid that they called him. I went to another police station. The police officers in that police station said me to forgive my husband. They said, forgive your husband, you have a child… These kinds of events could occur in every marriage… The police officers tried to convince me to forgive my husband a lot of times and I was tired to say them no… I was so surprised and I thought whether if I relied on them or not… ” Çiğdem, 22 years old, has also similar experience with the police:
- 116. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 102 “… I went to police. They said, you are a family, you are young, and you can solve your problems yourselves, return to your home… This is a small town and it would be better not to be heard your problems from the others…” According to the law in force # 6284, Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence against Women, the police as law enforcers, are authorized and are responsible for the prevention of violence against women. However this research results indicate that in most cases the attitudes of the police toward the women victims of domestic violence do not comply with the provisions of the law # 6284. Unfortunately the data obtained from the field research cannot directly explain why the police don’t take the necessary measures stated in the law in force to prevent the domestic violence against women. Nevertheless, within the framework of the explanations of the women victims of violence, it can be said that the police generally enforce the law in order to protect the family, as stated in the first part of the name of the Law # 6284 rather than to take measures, which are clearly mentioned in the provisions of the law, to eliminate domestic violence against women. Thus, in case the Law in question is enforced by the police to encourage the women victims of domestic violence to return to their homes where they suffer violence and to keep their family together, traditional family values which lead to violence against women are reproduced by solidarity patterns. Accordingly, repetitive expressions such as “today’s women leave their husbands for even just a slap”, “you should endure him”, “forgive your husband, you have a child”, “these kinds of events could occur in every marriage”, “return to your home”, “it would be better not to be heard your problems from the others” can be accepted as solidarity patterns which enable the protection of family through the violation of women’s human rights. 4.3. Solidarity patterns produced by the women victims of domestic violence The interviewees were asked if they think that they somehow deserve the violence to which they have been subjected. The answers are classified and evaluated in two groups: 1) According to the answers 18 women out of 31 (%58) at least sometimes think that they deserve the violence. Bade, 37 years old, with one child, explains how she tried to find fault with herself as an excuse for husband’s violence: “… At first I always asked myself if I was guilty. Did he use violence against me because of my fault? I asked myself if I deserved it…” Rana, 34 years old, with four children, tells how she forced herself to find an excuse for her husband’s violence: “… At first I thought that I was guilty, because I loved him. I thought maybe he was angry about something. His financial situation was not good, so maybe he was worried about it. Maybe I was guilty, maybe I made him angry …” Gamze, 31 years old, with two children, explains how she legitimizes her husband’s violence in an event that she thinks she is guilty: “… I keep my silence if I know that I am guilty. I say, OK! I am guilty in this event. I say, I deserve it [violence]. And I keep my silence…” Banu, 28 years old, with two children, tells how she justifies her husband’s violence in certain cases: “… He didn’t like my parents. He didn’t allow me to call my mother. Therefore I usually called my mother without notice to him. One day when I was talking with my mother, he saw me and he beat me. I thought I deserved it. Because although he didn’t want me to call my mother, I called her without notice to him …” Just like other research results on violence against women, the results of this study also show that in certain cases violence against women is somehow justified even by the women victims of domestic
- 117. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 103 violence. And this justification provides a basis for production and reproduction of violence against women. It is also well known that there are some social, cultural and economic reasons such as traditional family values, concern for children, financial dependence, behind the justification of violence by the battered women. However, whatever the reasons behind the justification of domestic violence against women the repetitive expressions such as “I thought I deserved it [violence], “I keep my silence” “maybe I was guilty”, “maybe I made him angry” enable at the same time the protection of family by fostering traditional family values in the form of solidarity patterns which ultimately lead to violence against women. 2) According to the answers, 13 women out of 31 (% 42) never think that they deserve the violence. However there are some contradictions in their explanations. For example the explanations of 10 women who said they never find themselves guilty for the violence they suffer give also an impression that in some cases women may deserve the violence. For example Ezgi, 44 years old, with four children, explains why she did not find herself guilty for the violence she was subjected: “… I never justified his violence. We [Ezgi and her co-wife] were perfect. At home we made everything perfectly. But we were nothing to him…” Gonca, 28 years old, with three children, also tells why she didn’t think that she deserved the violence: “… I never found myself guilty. I never thought like that. Because I did everything properly…” Accordingly, although the women, who never find themselves guilty for the violence they suffer, carry out all their responsibilities in accordance with the requirements of the traditional gender roles, they suffer from violence. And they find it unacceptable rather than the violence against women in general. Hence, it is thought that the explanations of the women who say they never think that they deserve the violence are not completely different from the explanations of those who sometimes think that they deserve it. Thus, it can be argued that the expressions such as “I never justified violence, because at home we made everything perfectly”, “I never find myself guilty, because I did everything properly” enable the protection of the family as an institution by fostering the traditional family values which lead to domestic violence against women. In fact the answers given to another question related to the justification of domestic violence against women verify the above evaluation on the attitudes of the interviewees toward the domestic violence against women. The interviewees were also asked their opinions about the women who behave “dishonorably” toward their husbands and their families. 8 women out of 24 (%32) stated, for example, if a woman cheats on her husband, this is an unacceptable, “dishonorable” behavior and she deserves the violence in anyway. That is, she should be beaten at least. Gönül, 28 years old, with one child, explains in which cases domestic violence against women is justified: “… I am angry with that woman. If her husband doesn’t beat her, she doesn’t have any right to behave like this. I think she should be beaten, she should be beaten. There are a lot of women who cannot find a warm home…” Duygu, 26 years old, with two children, also agrees with Gönül: “… She deserves the violence. Why she cheats on her husband? If I were her husband I would have been beaten her. If I were her husband I would have kicked seven bells out of her. If I were her husband I would have kicked her to the curb. Why she cheats on her husband? She deserves the violence. She should be punished any way…” Pınar, 24 years old, with three children, explains why a woman who cheats on her husband deserves the violence: “… She deserves the violence. I explain the reason. If she cheats on her husband although he is nice to her, although he doesn’t beat her, although he is a perfect husband, she deserves the violence. As a woman I can say that she deserves the violence. This is my opinion. I know that beating is not good. But in that case she deserves the violence. I think like this, it is not necessary to lie…”
- 118. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 104 The above explanations of the interviewees indicate that in certain cases domestic violence against women is justified even by the battered women. That is, it is not true that domestic violence against women is considered as unacceptable anyway by the women victims of domestic violence. Rather they think that women desire the violence for their “dishonorable behaviors” toward their husbands. Accordingly, repetitive expressions such as “she deserve the violence”, “she should be beaten”, “she should be punished anyway” can be accepted as solidarity patterns which enable the protection of the family by fostering traditional family values which lead to the reproduction of domestic violence against women. 5. Conclusion Undoubtedly, domestic violence against women is one of the hot issues of women studies. And, in spite of all the efforts to eliminate domestic violence against women, the problem continues to increase. Of course it is not easy to find only one and universal answer why the efforts to eliminate domestic violence against women give no results. Actually it is not true that all the efforts to stop domestic violence against women give no results. Rather, it can be said that, at least for Turkey, the dynamics which lead, directly or indirectly, to domestic violence against women are more effective than the combat mechanisms used for the elimination of it. Accordingly, in Turkey, some of the traditional family values are one of the important dynamics which constitute a legitimate ground for the production or reproduction of domestic violence against women. Nevertheless the policies established for the elimination of domestic violence against women are mainly focused on the protection of family without questioning its traditional values. In fact the name of the Law for the elimination of violence against women is “Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence against Women”. At this point it can be argued that today in Turkey the struggle for the elimination of domestic violence against women is generally conducted within the limits of protection of family in accordance with the name of the law on violence against women. Moreover it is also argued that family-oriented policies established for the elimination of domestic violence against women might help to foster traditional family values which lead to production or reproduction of domestic violence against women. For example the identity of motherhood may become a very important obstacle in front of the women victims of domestic violence. Because, based on the traditional family values they are persuaded and/or forced by their family members and/or their relatives and even by the police not to leave their homes where they are subjected to violence for the sake of their children. In other words, since the women in family are accepted firstly as wife and mother rather than an independent individual, violence against to them is considered as tolerable for the wellbeing of their children and for the protection of their family. And this understanding opens a legitimate ground for the reproduction of domestic violence against women. Based on the research results of this study it is thought that solidarity patterns, which enable the protection of family play an important role in production, reproduction and also circulation of traditional family values which lead to domestic violence against women. The concept of solidarity, as a first impression, is associated with unity rather than dispute in every situation and for every person. And this impression constitutes an obstacle to analyze it from a critical point of view. Because solidarity, like in the cases of so-called honor killing, doesn’t always have positive consequences in every situation and for every person, from the perspective of human rights and freedoms. In fact the possible negative consequences of solidarity is explained like this: “Although the absence of solidarity is more often regarded as problematic than is its presence, nevertheless there are standpoints from which solidarity appears to pose a threat to individuals’ autonomy, creativity and scope for being different” (Crow, 2002). Therefore, as a conclusion, it is thought that the evaluation of the concept of solidarity from a critical point of view especially in the
- 119. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 105 process of the questioning traditional family values can provide useful contributions for the permanent solutions to the domestic violence against women. For this purpose, Giddens’s concept of “damaged solidarities” (Giddens, 1994) is suggested to be used in order to emphasize the negative consequences of the traditional family values which lead to domestic violence against women. Acknowledgements Domestic violence against women is one of the most important issues of women studies. However, it is quite difficult to conduct a field research on domestic violence against women. The reason is that, although domestic violence against women is a universal social problem, it is also directly related to the private life. Therefore it is understandable that those who are the victims of domestic violence are unwilling to tell their violence experiences. Nevertheless the data to be obtained from the women victims of domestic violence are strongly needed in order to find permanent solutions to the problem. Hence the author is very thankful to the women victims of domestic violence who stayed in Çankaya Municipality Women’s Shelter during the field research and who accepted to be part of this study for their invaluable contributions. The author knows very well that this study could not have been accomplished without their contributions. The author is also thankful to the authorities and all the staff of Çankaya Municipality Women’s Shelter for giving great importance to this study and for showing hospitality to the author.
- 120. Ayşe Çetinkaya Aydın/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 106 References Başbakanlık Aile Araştırma Kurumu. (1995). Aile İçi Şiddetin Sebep ve Sonuçları [Elektronik Sürüm]. Ankara: Bizim Büro Basım Evi. Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü. (2009). Türkiye’de Kadına Yönelik Aile İçi Şiddet [Elektronik Sürüm]. Ankara: Elma Teknik Basım Matbaacılık. Crow, G. (2002). Social Solidarities. Theories, Identities and Social Change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Giddens, A. (1994). Beyond Left And Right. California: Stanford University Press. Gülçür, L. (1999). A study on domestic violence and sexual abuse in Ankara, Turkey. Women for Women’s Human Rights Reports No.4. İçli, T. (1994). Aile İçi Şiddet: Ankara-İstanbul ve İzmir Örneği [Elektronik Sürüm]. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 11 (1-2), 7-20. İstanbul Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Ceza Hukuku ve Kriminolojik Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi. (2003). Suçla Mücadele Bağlamında Türkiye’de Aile İçi Şiddet. Ülke Çağında Kriminolojik ve Viktimolojik Alan Araştırması ve Değerlendirme. İstanbul: Beta Basım. Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu. (t.y.). Erişim: 27 Eylül 2015, Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu Ağ Sitesi, (http://kadincinayetlerinidurduracagiz.net/veriler/2349/agustos-2015- kadin-cinayeti-gercekleri) Neuman, W. L. (2006). Social Research Methods. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. (6th ed.).Boston. Pearson Education. Rittersberger-Tılıç, H. (1998). Aile İçi Şiddet: Bir Sosyolojik Yaklaşım. O. Çiftçi (Ed.). 20. Yüzyılın Sonunda Kadınlar ve Gelecek Konferansı (s. 119-129). Ankara: Orta Doğu Amme İdaresi Yayınları. Sallan Gül, S. (2011). Türkiye’de Kadın Sığınmaevleri. Erkek Şiddetinden Uzak Yaşama Açılan Kapılar mı? İstanbul: Bağlam Yayıncılık. Theodorson, G. A. ve Theodorson A. G. (1979). A Modern Dictionary of Sociology. New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Barnes & Noble Books. Yıldırım, A. (1998). Sıradan Şiddet. İstanbul: Boyut Yayın Grubu
- 121. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 107 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Women’s Representation in Media: From “The Housewife” to “Sex Object” Ayşe Savaş* Middle East Technical University, Turkey Abstract This research paper examines the commodification of women through the media. Companies use women to advertise products in even irrelevant context and to draw an “ideal image” of how a woman should look and consequently to sell the products that will help them look that way. With a qualitative search on how and when the media started to objectify women and an examination of various examples and the context in which women are most frequently used, this paper argues that whatever the visual press has marketed as the “liberalized woman” actually served to the further material oppression of women. Following a brief introduction, the second section provides a Literature Review of the ways the media helps to commodify things and the ideas and arguments of where the women are placed in this context. Section 3 provides a brief historical review of the dual role of women within the consumer society. In section 4, various examples are considered to show how women are used in the media and what the outcomes of this attitude towards women are. The last section then wraps up with a concluding remark on the argument of the paper. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women in media, media representation, commodification of women, objectification of women, capitalist society * Corresponding Author. E-mail address: ayse.savas_01@metu.edu.tr
- 122. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 108 1. Introduction Through our daily lives, we are constantly bombarded with images from the media. The newspapers, the television, the internet. There is no running away from it and actually, this is what those who prepare the advertisements pride themselves on – they can put those images anywhere, even onto our coffee cups or right into that video we watch online. It is also not possible to miss the pattern in which women are usually shown in these images: mostly the focus is on their bodies, with the message being their appearance is the most important aspect of them, and other times they are mostly shown as one-dimensional characters even on movies. They are generally regarded as something less than they are and with this recurring attitude the media has long helped the objectification and commodification of women. Gallagher suggests that it wasn’tuntil the 1990s, when media coverage could no longer be dismissed in most of the world, that the issues concerning women in media stopped being regarded as of secondary importance to “cardinal problems such as poverty, health and education” (2002:2). On the other hand, van Zoonen states that “[the] media have always been at the centre of feminist critique” and points out that as early as 1963, Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, was criticizing the media for its contribution to the “myth that women could find true fulfilment in being only a housewife and a mother” (1994:11). According to van Zoonen since “women’smovement is not only engaged in a material struggle about equal rights and opportunities for women, but also in a symbolic conflict about definitions of femininity”, the way women were represented in the media have always been an important battleground for the feminists. She states that by the early 1970s a considerable collection of feminist action and thought about the media was accumulated. One can only assume that works concerning the issues of women have become more frequent after that since McClelland (1993:220) marks the start point of the concern for the patterns for sexist visual imagery as the 1970s, following the rapid social change of the 1960s. Concerns over the representation of women in the media have been on the quantitative –Gallagher uses data on the underrepresentation of women- and also regarded the content analysis –the stereotypes and socialization, pornography and ideology as van Zoonen groups the feminist themes in communication studies. More and more frequently, though, the focus has been on the gender portrayal in the media and how this may affect the way women perceive themselves as well as showing how the society sees them. As van Zoonen notes, Tuchman, –whose work in the late 1970s is among the first to produce research on this topic with a well-developed theoretical framework- comments on the fact that the media has failed to represent the increasing numbers of women in the labour force and “also it symbolically denigrates [women] by portraying them as incompetent, inferior and always subservient to men” (1994:16). Kilbourne states in the third instalment of her Killing Us Softly video series (2000) that as the foundation of the mass media, advertisements aim to sell products and they do; however, they also sell values, images and “concepts of love and sexuality, of romance, of success... and perhaps most important of normalcy. To a great extent advertising tells us who we are and who we should be.” As Kilbourne focuses, media does so especially in regards to its visualization of women. In this paper, it is my purpose to show the ways in which the mass media objectifies women, the consequences of this behaviour on women and also the consequences on the way society regards women and to see when this started. It is argued that the “liberalized women” actually served to the further the material oppression of women within the capitalist system.
- 123. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 109 2. Literature Review Becker describes that there are two standard ways the public’s involvement with the arts being studied: “behavioural accounting” –defined as the number of who people attend an artistic event- and “impact” – whether they were affected by it. His emphasis is that “‘the impact’ paradigm improperly treats the public as an inert mass which doesn’tdo anything on its own, but rather just reacts to what is presented to it by powerful … organizations and the representatives of dominant social strata” (2002:337). It would, of course, be a vast caricature to assume people accept what they are shown by the media without any doubt and any questioning of it. However, the main focus of scholars regarding this issue have largely relied on the fact that these images are not merely presented; they are reinforced over and over again, and as Jean Kilbourne describes, they help create a pattern of normalcy in the minds of people. Jhally argues that criticizing a single ad in isolation is very difficult but the falsity of advertisements arises from “the systems of images, from the ads as a totality and from their cumulative effect. ... from the message system. ... from the institutional context within which ads are produced” (Jhally, 1989:139). Gallagher states that the widespread use of means to communicate through the media made it clear that the media has an enormous power to influence ideas and behaviour at all levels of society. Brooks and Hébert start their article with: “In our consumption-oriented, mediated society, much of what comes to pass as important is based often on the stories produced and disseminated by the media institutions”. They argue that people shape their social identities through the “commodified texts produced by media for audiences that are increasingly segmented by the social constructions of race and gender” (2006:297). In 1979 Ceulemans and Fauconnier discuss whether the mass media takes the role of a mirror or a creator of culture. They argue the controversy between media socialists –who underline the value- producing function of mass media- and empirics –who demonstrate how social reality is reflected in the mass media- gave way to a compromise integrating the both approaches as most of the empirical studies of the 1970s pointed to “a creative, reinforcing and transforming cultural impact of the mass media” (1979:5). Defining mass media as “means or instruments serving as carriers of messages from communicator to a mass audience”; Ceulemans and Fauconnier emphasized that it produced “message systems and symbol which create or structure prevailing images of social reality, thus affecting the process of social change”. They show that there is an increasing trend towards showing women in relation to their physical appearance and explain this in terms of the close relationship that exists between “advertising, the consumer goods industry and the crucial economic role of women as consumers” (1979:14). The shift from the housewife to the sex-object, according to Weibel (1977 cited in Ceulemans and Fauconnier, 1979), happened since the effectiveness of advertising depends on the manipulation of the consumer’s self-image and once the producers have noticed that there was no more gain from the housewife, they turned to exploit women’s sexuality, in the guise of “sexual liberation”. She is portrayed within this “two-dimensional” sphere and the other dimensions of her personality are absent from advertising. One thing that Celeumans and Fauconnier drew attention to, and is also elaborated by Bağatur (2007), is the two-way relation women have with this process. They are both the most solicited consumers and the instruments of persuasion. Thus they are commodified themselves. Bağatur states that “late nineteenth- century European history did not witness only the rise of mass consumerism and integration of women as primary consuming class into this rising commercial world, but also the marketing of women as a commodity itself” (2007:85). She cites Irigaray’s 1985 article, in which Irigaray makes a critique of nineteenth-century society –a society within which “women function as objects of exchange between men
- 124. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 110 for the purposes of sex and reproduction”- explaining that “[the women’s] status and subjectivity are defined through their relationship with men”, in support of her point. Bağatur stands on the belief that women were the primary group to be thought of as consumers –whereas men were the producers- and she states that through “spectacularization” women were also commodified: “[W]hile women were invited to consume more, specific guidance of this consumption towards articles related to women’s appearance made women themselves commodities.” (2007:87). In 1993 Steeves lists the “representations of women in global, mainstream media” as one of the Five Global Gender Issues and also shares the belief that mass media is not a mere representative of the society but it reinforces, not just creates, patriarchal ideologies around the world. It should, however, be noted that Steeves’ list is questionable in the sense that it seemingly focus more on the problems of women who live in the “developed” countries of the world. Mohanty describes this as “the typically authorizing signature of such Western feminist writings on women in the third world” (1988:352) and is very vary of this authorization as she draws a parallel with the “humanism as a Western ideological and political project.” McClelland states that women and minorities are being portrayed in stereotypical roles and in distorted or sexist images within the mass media and also believes that the visual images are powerful means of communication which convey “intended or unintended messages” and can carry “cultural symbolism” (1993:221). He lists the consequences of the women’s portrayal in mass media as; objectification, seduction, self-gratification, stereotyping and underrepresentation. Overall, it is safe to say that most scholars who write about the issues of women’s relationship to media believe that, despite being an appropriate means to examine the production-consumption relations and perceptions of self-image in the society, the mass media more than just reflects the social structure; it also affects it and alters it. The two most concerning topics discussed by the literature are the lack of representation of women in the media and how they are represented when they are. 3. A Brief Historical Review on Women’s Dual Role within the Consumer Society “The adage ‘Consumption, thy name is women’ resonates with such venerable authority that one might expect to find it cited in Barlett’s Familiar Quotations, attributed to some Victoria savant or to an eminent critic of modern frippery,” are the opening words of The Sex of Things (1996). The emphasis of the book is on the fact that despite its naturalization as an inevitable part of the women’spsychology, the “excessive desire to consume as a peculiarly feminine quality” (Jones, 1996:27) is a historical phenomenon which has its roots in the long transition from the aristocratic to bourgeois society (1996:1). Of interest to note is that with the technological advances and the “industrial revolution”, it was seen as the “men” were conquering nature. The nature had been thought of as “female” for centuries and in accordance with this, as Jones states, women were associated with the characteristics of inconsistency, treachery and change. The advent of liberal politics and public space, which distinguished needs as “irrational, superfluous, or so impassioned that they overloaded the political system” and “those that were rationally articulated and cast in terms appropriate to being represented and acted through normal political process” (1996:15), was one of the structural changes that reinforced the propensity to feminize the realm of consumption. In line with the view of women being inconsistent, the first set of needs defined were identified with women. The division of labour of the capitalist system which constructed the household with the male breadwinner, defining his labour as the wage labour, further reinforced the differences between the household and the market place, the female provisioners and male workers, the consumers and the producers (1996:15). With Say’s famous theory of supply creating its own demand taken basis, the production
- 125. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 111 process came to be what gave things their value, leaving consumption to be nonwork, to lay in a “theoretical limbo” (1996:16). There was, of course, a shift in the reasons for women’sconsumption over the period. Leora Auslander explains that while at the beginning of the century the focus was on the making of the family and the class, around mid-1800s it became the representation of the nation and by 1880s it was more about the representation of self. According to Auslander, “capitalism encouraged women’s individuation through goods” (1996:104). Solomon-Godeau historicizes the image of woman-as-commodity and the relationship it posits between consumption and female-centered erotic desire by studying the lithographs that were created in France during the eighteenth century (Roberts, 1998: 827). Roberts states that Solomon-Godeau “is not so much interested in consumer activity as she is in the cultural forms of commodities –how the growing emphasis on consumer activity in European society found visual representation in all areas of cultural life” (1998:827). Solomon-Godeau, draws from Irigaray’s work and states that “a commodity –a woman- is divided into two irreconcilable bodies: her ‘natural’ body and her socially valued, exchangeable body”. She explains that the commodity-culture sexualized the commodity, eroticized the objects such that no more is the importance was on the emblem of the commodity but it come to be on its lure. Then what happened was the historical shaping of femininity –the spectacularization of the female body- and according to Solomon- Godeau, the ideological naturalization of the feminine-as-spectacle, or woman-as-image, is the precondition for the homology between the seductive, possessable feminine and the seductive, possessable commodity (1996:114). There was an equivalence between the imagery of eroticized feminine display and the allure (or threat) of modernity and “in the process of becoming the unique cultural locus of aesthetics, sexuality and difference the female body became the bearer of other contemporary meanings, namely the concept of modernity” (1996:116). Sometime between the French Revolution and the later years of the Restoration, she argues, the female body replaced the male body as “the central place in art theory, pedagogy, and academic practice” and hence the image of femininity as the image of desire is a fully modern one (1996:115). Furthermore, by examining various examples from the period, Solomon-Godeau comes to the conclusion that these images are aligned with a condition described by Mulvey as “to-be-looked-at-ness”; as Roberts explains they “are not women of human will and individuality but erotic tokens designed for visual consumption” (1998:829) conforming to what Marx described as the “fetishized commodity”. Solomon-Godeau’s definition of midcentury France as the “visual culture of commodity capitalism” is then on safe grounds as she concludes that what is equally on offer with the lithographs is the fantasy of possession of the world the print depicts. Her analysis of the Le Roman du Jour by Devéria concludes that the desire was not only provoked for the commodity “but for the ambiance or lifestyle that the commodity represents”. She states that in general what the lithographs of the time purveyed was the “familiar lure of the commodity, ‘figured’ by femininity but laden with even more potent implications of ‘having’” (1996:126). According to Solomon-Godeau, by the early nineteenth century there is decontextualization, a distillation of the image of femininity to a subject in and of itself with images that isolated the feminine motif through the reduction or total elimination of narrative, literary or mythical allusion (1996:131). Those images were photographic, devolving on the sight of the female body alone. Around the first decades of the century, Solomon-Godeau explains, different types started to accompany the more or less eroticized types of femininity among which was the Parisienne: “pretty, fashionable, fickle, desirable, but venal” she
- 126. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 112 could “well be described as an emblematic figure for that Paris being constructed through capitalism as the capital of desire” (1992:142). The image of women as housewives, which ruled as the dominating image of women in the media until the late twentieth century, reinforcing the household structure has been present since at least the nineteenth century, too. Loeb paints a picture of how women were represented as housewives of the Victorian England advertisements. According to Burdon’s review on her book, Loeb argues “as consumers of the merchandise and the media that represented it, women played a major role in the nineteenth-century commercial revolution documented by [the descriptive catalog of Victorian and Edwardian advertisements]” (1997:348). Burton notes that the advertisements were widely based on the gendered stereotype of the idea that the home was the woman’s domain and hence the “Victorian notions of the ‘respectable feminine’” were pivotal to the process of the products of the commercial capitalism being naturalized and the icons of mass production being domesticated. Burton points out that Loeb has not concerned herself with explaining whether women were affected by these advertisements but counts that images of consumer-as-mother was also played upon by the advertisers and tells us that it was realized that “sexy women would sell” (Loeb, 1994:57 cited in Burton, 1997:349). Even though the spread of images through technological advancement has definitely accelerated these processes and the needs of the market along with women’s position in the society altered the domineering portrayal, one thing we can draw from this review is that neither women’s role as consumers nor the female body’s commodification were natural. They were historical processes which came to be within capitalist society. 4. Women’s Representation in Media The headline of the Turkish newspaper Referans for 17-18th of April 2010 read: “Not much changed in the advertisement strategies during the past fifty years! Sexist advertisements are dead, sexy woman is on the shop window”. Özçelik states in the article that even though the sexist advertisements of the 1950s which showed women as the housewives who are only born to please their husbands no longer exist, the one thing that remains is the commodification of women. While women reshaped their existence within the social, political, artistic and work lives, the advertisers realized that telling women to buy one product, or else their husband would leave them, did not work anymore. As a result, advertisements moved towards “disguised sexist” ones or ones within which women were outright used as sexual objects. The new way to sell was to tell women that with the right cosmetic products they could look like Hollywood stars and with the help of photoshop, unattainable goals were worked into women’s subconscious. According to Bağatur’s analysis on the Turkish print media’s representation of women from 1930 to 1970, women in this period were not as sexualized as they are today. Rather the focus was on their role as the housewife or their facial beauty and how they needed to keep it to hold onto their husband or to find one. Advertisers were in a dilemma, Bağatur explains, on regards the representation of women in advertising since the newly forming republic expected her to take upon her shoulders by simultaneously being modern and traditional: “While they were invited to beautify themselves in accordance with the Western norms with new cosmetics and fashion products, they were also continuously associated with traditional roles of housewife and mother.” (Bağatur, 2007:110). She presents advertisements of product such as butter, pasta and cleaning items showing how they played on the stereotype of women being responsible for cooking and cleaning for the family. Where woman is the natural bearer of the tasks such as cooking and serving for the family, it is usually the daughter who helps her, while the man is either the husband who comes home happy to see a meal served
- 127. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 113 or a professional stating his opinion on the subject. Even though there is a modification of this representation in the present day with men being shown as cooking in the kitchen, he is either messing up or only helping their partners until the woman –whose natural domain he has stepped in- comes and saves the day with a new product. Women are frequently portrayed as mothers in advertisements about food, linking their success in the role as a parent to their feeding certain products to their children. Bağatur justifies this anxiety surrounding children’s care as being nothing but normal for the Turkish case since undernourishment was one of the major factors of high rates of infant death in Turkey and thus the new food items almost served as cheap substitutes for the poorer people. Women were also shown as the potential buyers of the cleaning items. Usually, it is not them but the product that does the job, too, with slogans such as “only Tursil can provide this whiteness.” “In advertisements where women are freed from the work, they are usually pictured in relief looking gladly at the work the item did for them,” states Bağatur and shows that the same strategy was later used for electrical appliances, too. The address in those ads, too, however much they promised to free women from such works was that washing machines and kitchen appliances were primarily for women. Bağatur’s focus is on the Western products coming into the early Turkish Republic and blending with the traditional aspects of the society and thus she states that rather than advocating explicit sexual appeal they were promoting being beautiful for the husband. This kind of notion is not hard to find in the advertisements of the West of the time, either. Women were also called onto beautify themselves to keep their husbands, although male gaze is called upon without the mention of marriage in some, too. It is repetitively suggested by Palmolive soaps that, if women do not use these products their husbands will leave them. The message of housework being women’s primary objective in life was constantly given, too. An advertisement for Kenwood Chef stated that “The Chef does everything but cook –that’s what wives are for!” with a woman leaning against her husband happily. We even see outright violence against women in some of these advertisements, for example, it is shown that a wife not “store-testing” for fresher Chase and Sanborn coffee is up for a beating by her husband while another one asks whether it is always a crime to kill a woman. The shocking Mr Leggs ad demonstrates a clear example what Kilbourne states is showing women as less than human –with a man in stepping on a woman’s head while the rest of her body is a tiger rug- which leads to justification of violence. Even though today’s advertisements keep on with the notion of women being housewives and doing the jobs as cleaning and cooking without complaint (a long running series of Ace detergent in Turkey showed the fictional “Aunt Ayşe” saving other women from the worries of not white enough laundries) the dominant image now is one of the sex object. It is hard to miss all the exploitation of women’s body and sexuality in the media. Women are used to sell products that have nothing in particular related to a woman’s body or sexuality, like cars, alcohol, hamburgers even. We see an almost death-looking half naked model in an advertisement of Duncan Quinn Men’s Wear. We see women’s body made into objects, as in the “feminine mouse”. More often than not the focus is on one part of her body and as Kilbourne states, “she’s not even an object any more, she is a part of an object” (2000). The sexualisation of women is reflected in the representation of women on television and movies, too. Senghas states that one of the most common ways especially the teenage girls are depicted is as a dumb, ditzy girl with a credit card, interested only in make-up, boys, clothes and shopping. Ingham (1995) elaborates that women are represented in these shows within a few different contexts, that the domestic women, career women, single mothers, beautiful women were all there. What she underlines is that they
- 128. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 114 are portrayed in a light of approval or disapproval in accordance with the roles that patriarchy favours: “the housewife is favoured, whilst the woman in power is often shown to be the villain. ... It is also shown that a woman is either intelligent or beautiful; but rarely both.” Moreover, if the movie’s representation doesn’t do it, the merchandizing will. Ono and Buescher point to the representation of children in the merchandize of Pocahontas. There were advertisements that identified young white boys with John Smith of the movie and stated, in Burger King, they also could find an adventure –Pocahontas being the adventure they will find and have. Kilbourne points to a similar case in most advertisements directed for children, while the boys are shown in action, enjoying the world with the girls being passive and silent. She points to an interesting, but probably not so surprising fact: the boys are always taller, tougher, and active while the girls are looking up at them and smiling. Sexualisation, too, starts from early ages in our days. There have been a line of padded bikini tops for girls as young as seven years old. The image from a clothing line for young girls –supported by a famous singer and designed by her mother- show girls all made-up, wearing high-heels and posing in ways that are identified with grown up models or otherwise sipping tea calmly. Just like their grown up counterparts, young girls are either overtly sexualized or passive without a voice. The consequences of this representation need to be mentioned. Kilbourne states the objectification of women is the first step towards the justification of violence against them. She argues that use of women’s bodies as objects creates a cultural climate where women are seen as “things” and this is almost always the same process seen towards violence. She states it is similar to what happens with racism or homophobia: defining someone as lesser than a human being makes violence become inevitable as a result. The flawless women shown in the media keep telling women to chase after this ideal image which is unattainable, lowering their self-esteem when they cannot. There has also been many research conducted on the effect of media on illness caused by eating disorders. Becker and Hamburg state that the media plays “a vital role in supporting attitudes about body and self in our culture that enhance the risk of developing an eating disorder” (1996:163). They argue that the solution to this threat requires more than just changing the dress sizes of the models: they rightly state that what needs to be done and what really is a challenge is to “promote a view of the human body as a dwelling rather than a spectacle, a commodity, or raw material” (1996:166). 5. Conclusion In this paper the way women are presented in the media and the consequences of this presentation have been studied. It was concluded that scholars of the area are mostly concerned with whether women are represented or not in the media, and when they are, how they are represented –the stereotype of women as housewives and the sexualisation of her image being the dominant trends. It was argued that the women- as-image, as well as the women-as-consumer were modern concepts, introduced and reinforced during the transition to the capitalist society. Lastly, it was argued that although the blatantly sexist representation of the mid-twentieth century left its place to the sexually “liberalized” woman, this image is equally sexist and has consequences on the way women view themselves and the society views them. It can be argued, as Becker has, that taking the society as a passive actor which believes in whatever the media presents to them paints a vast caricature of what it really is, and media is mirroring what already is out there and those are true and sound arguments. However, it is clear that a body image that according to Kilbourne genetically can be seen in the 5 percent of the population is not quite representative of the general society. Furthermore, even though the extent to which is hard to analyze, women are affected by
- 129. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 115 media’s portrayal and they do feel pressured to measure up to this ideal image, how else could have the diet, the cosmetics, the cosmetic surgery could make millions of dollars each year? To conclude, it should be noted that women’s oppression continues with force within our society. The fact that this has reached such early ages is quite threatening. Even if their representation in the media is not the primary concern of women in the entire world, considering its effects and the fact that it reinforces the way that women are thought of, it is high time that precautions be taken on the issue. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Assoc. Prof. Sheila Margaret Pelizzon for her guidance and continued support. As always, to my family. References Bağatur, Sine (2007). “Engendering Consumption: Commodification of Women through Print Media with Specific Reference to the Turkish Case”. Unpublished Master Thesis, Middle East Technical University Becker, Anne E. and Hamburg, Paul (1996). “Culture, the Media, and Eating Disorders”, Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 4:3, pp 163-167 Becker, Howard S (2002). “Studying the New Media”, Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 25, No. 3; 337-343 Brooks, D. E. and Hébert, L. P. (2006). “Gender, Race and Media Representation”, in The SAGE Handbook of Gender and Communication, B. Dow and J. Woods (eds.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc, pp 297-319 Burton, Antoinette (1997). “Reviewed work(s): Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Woman by Lori Anne Loeb”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No. 2, pp 348-350 Ceulemans, Mieke and Fauconnier, Guido (1979). Mass Media: The Image Role and Social Conditions of Women. Paris: UNESCO; [New York: distributed by Unipub] De Grazia Victoria and Ellen Furlough (eds.). The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Berkeley, L.A. and London: University of California Press, 1996 Gallagher, Margaret (2002). “Women, Media and Democratic Society: In Pursuit of Rights and Freedoms”, EGM Ingham, Helen (1995). “The Portrayal of Women on Television”. Retrieved from: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hzi9401.html Irigaray, Luce (1985). “Women on the Market” in This Sex Which is Not Mine, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp 170-191
- 130. Ayşe Savaş /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 116 Jhally, Sut (1989). “Advertising, Gender and Sex: What‟s Wrong with a Little Objectification?” in Working Papers and Proceedings of the Center for Psychosocial Studies (edited by Richard Parmentier and Greg Urban) No. 29. Retrieved from: http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/whatswrongwithalit/ Kilbourne, Jean (2000). Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women. MacDonald, Myra (1995). Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media. London: HodderArnold McClelland, John (1993). “Visual Images and Re-Imaging: A Review of Research in Mass Communication” in Women in Mass Communication, ed. Pamela J. Creedon, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (1988). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, Feminist Review, No. 30, 61-88 Ono, Kent A. and Buescher, Derek T. (2001). “Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpacking the Commodification of a Native American Woman”, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18, 23-43 Özçelik, Sıla. "Seksist Reklamlar Öldü, Seksi Kadın Vitrinde” Refereans [İstanbul] 17-18 April 2010: 11 Peach, Lucinda Joy (ed.) (1998). Women in Culture: A Women’s Studies Anthology, Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Roberts, Mary Louise (1998). “Gender, Consumption, and Commodity Culture”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 103, No. 3, 817-844 Senghas, Sarah (2006). “Slender, Sexy Women Portrayed in Movies, TV, Magazines and Advertisements” Retrieved from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/32112/sexist_stereotypes_in_the_media.html?cat=9 Steeves, Leslie (1993). “Gender and Mass Communication in a Global Context” in Women in Mass Communication, Creedon, Pamela J (ed.), Sage Publications, Second Edition, pp 32-60 Van Zoonen, Liesbet (1994). Feminist Media Studies. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- 131. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 117 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies From Arranged Marriage to Marriage Brokers: Reconstruction of a Cultural Tradition in Border Regions Ayşe Yıldırım* Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, The Faculty of Arts and Science, Turkey Abstract Income inequality and impoverishment of women, which was led by globalization and neoliberal transformation process resulted in participation of women in international migration. Cross border marriages which are particularly made by women in poor countries have become a tool to overcome this “new poverty” emerged as a result of neo- liberal policies. Direction of this poverty oriented marriage migration has developed from “global South” to “global North”. Participation of women in marriage migration has brought along many changes in cultural area. Probably the most visible one of these changes is that in many regions of the world, marriage offices and agencies have become increasingly dominant in cross border marriage market in recent years with their marriage broker roles. Profit oriented, corporate marriage offices and agencies make the foreign brides the factor of an international market in cross border marriages and high profits gained in this area make these companies a large market. In fact, mediating between people with the intention of marriage is not a new concept. In traditional sense, there have always been a mediator; a third person between individuals with the potential of marriage in many cultures of the world. In cross border marriages, corporations which undertake a critical role such as marriage offices and agencies appear as modern time manifestations of these traditional matchmakers. Data of this study were gathered from Turkey (Mardin/Nusaybin)- Syria (Cezire/Qamişlo) border region. In the path of data based on field study, marriage offices and agencies or brokers which can be defined as “modern matchmakers” were evaluated in relation with poverty. Definitely, poverty was adopted not only as a material poverty but also as a more complicated process related with cultural exclusion and participation practices particularly based on gender mainstreaming and ethnicity. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Mail-order; bride; border region; Syria; marriage; brokers * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90 248 213 31 43 E-mail address: ayseyildirim@mehmetakif.edu.tr
- 132. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 118 1. Mail-order bride Mail-order bride (MOB-ordering bride via mail) which is a new social phenomenon constitutes an important basis of marriage migration in global plane. In fact, although MOB is accepted as a phenomenon of today, in manifests itself as a modern form of intermediated marriage arrangements seen since early periods. This new matchmaking phenomenon which gives marriage a commercial dimension started spreading and has become widespread since 1960s particularly across border. At the end of 1970s, supply-demand pattern in MOB system was initially seen between the men of industrialized Western Europe and Australia and the women of Southern and Eastern Asia (Kojima 2001:199). An important feature of 1970s was that participation rate of women in work force increased and thus gender roles changed and global economic transformation resulted in the migration being feminized in global plane. Income inequality and impoverishment caused by globalization and neo-liberal transformation process became an important factor for women to migrate in order to sustain their families (Ulutaş&Kalfa 2009: 13). Cross border marriages which are particularly made by women in poor countries have become a tool to overcome this “new poverty”1 emerged as a result of neo-liberal policies. In 1980 and 90s, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan and other Eastern and Southern Asian countries were added to the diversifying supply-demand pattern (Kojima 2001:119). N. Constable defined the direction of this poverty-oriented marriage migration as follows (APMM 2007: 8): A large part of international marriage immigrants is constituted by women. These women migrate from largely poor countries to rich ones; from underdeveloped global “South”- some regions of Asia, Latin America and Easters Europe- to global “North”- to former USSR, North America, Western Europe and some regions of Eastern Asia. Due to intense marriage demand from poor countries, it is not surprising that marriage offices, agencies and brokers which undertake the role of marriage broker in organizing international marriages emerged in this period. For instance, Yuval-Davis emphasizes the racist and economic aspect of “mail order bride”. While mentioning the relations between racialized “others”, Yuval-Davis (2003:105-106) states that this is not always visible in the axis of violence, sometimes orientalist male dreams generate sex tourism industries which become the main basis of impoverished post-colonial individual and groups to survive economically. However, he says, these relations sometimes goes beyond being sexual and causes designation of “beautiful, meek, hardworking and dependant” Eastern women as “perfect spouses” for “alone and shy” Western men. This developed the companies of “mail order bride”. While explaining the cross border marriages in America; Christine So (akt. Williams 2010: 87) defines that this industry is an example of 1 Avalization of poverty researchers is that the poverty that came to the fore in 1980s was different from its former patterns. Özbudun (2003: 328-329) states that this difference is bidirectional. First of them is all manifestations of poverty on earth appeared as a result of neo-liberal policies. “Dynamism of capital, which means MNC strategies which makes it possible to slide the investments to regions in which labor force cost is lower, raw material sources are cheaper and more accessible and tax regulations are more suitable; elasticating work force market, thus rendering workers without organizations and corroding bargain forces by making them flexi- time; privatizations that are always accompanied by high rates of unemployment, discharge of public services, thus corruption of social security systems, privatization of basic human rights services such as health and education…; these “neo-liberal policies” which consist of synchronized promulgation of implementations such as neo-liberal “structural adaptation programs” imposed by corporations such as IMF and The World Bank in the spiral of borrowing in which interest excess the capital many times more and the trap of loan into which especially the Southern countries are forced constitute the common source of global poverty spreading both in industrialized North and Southern countries which are baptized with the quality of industrializing/developing. ” The second is re-definition of poverty and parallel to this, the emphasize made on the insufficiency of definition as only “not being able to access the sustenance tools” or “not being able to meet the minimum basic needs required for the living of person or family”.
- 133. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 119 fantasies of Americans on third world woman and global market being presented with these bodies for profit. On the other hand, due to ordering brides via internet advertisements and announcements in cyber technology age, all foreign brides are called “mail-order brides” by being generalized today (APMM 2007: 6). According to Ericka Johnson (akt. Williams 2010: 87), presentation of women via internet and printed catalogues shows that these marriages are completely commercial. Because, men, adding the women they like in a website to their shopping cart and categorizing the women points this commercial aspect of marriage. Cataloging he women in this way causes these marriages to be popular and rightfully the perception of women as a product submitted for service. A similar emphasis was made by Katty Robinson. Robinson (1996) states that; the term “mail order” resembles the catalogues presented to consumers in stores to pick up their needs. In his field study, Kojima (2001) emphasized that one of basis justifications of MOB is related to gender roles. According to Kojima (2001:200) the existing perception that marriage has a central role in the life of women forces women to MOB marriages. Kojima, who focused on Korean sample records that marriage age in Korea is 25 at most and many women increasingly apply MOB in order to get rid of the label of single/alone woman. Kojima (2001:200) also states that MOB reflects the deep structure of patriarchal system having the perception of non-challenging of femininity. However, Kojima says, in industrialized countries women struggle with this perception by delaying marriage or opposing to marriage in individual sense. Although this opposition hasn’t made an important impact on the issues of womanhood as maternity or change of work division based on gender in the social structure, this resistance by women creates a gap in maternity and reproduction of housework. This gap formed by Western women filled by the women of other countries via MOB. Also, application to marriage agencies or similar organizations for finding mail order brides caused controversies about cross border marriage pattern with regard to sex tourism and women traffic. However, this point of view disregards marriages made by meeting in different conditions during border crossings. Nicole Constable (akt. Williams 2010: 86) also objects to this definition and defines that not all foreign marriages are made in this way, people who meet abroad may as well get married. Thus, she underlined that instead of the concept of MOB, “correspondence marriage” points a more accurate definition. Another criticism by Constable on the concept is that MOB defines the bride and the groom only by a major structural inequality. This definition disregards the possibility that those adult women, most of which received high education may have made these decisions rationally. K. Robinson, who examines MOB marriages in Australia, makes a similar criticism. Robinson (1996) opposes to introduction of marriages in this category as counter to traditional love marriages and advocates that these women also have cultural expectations from marriage and men making cross border marriages apply to mail-order bride marriages to find emotions such as love and romance which they can’t find in their own societies. In spite of these debates, the existing reality is that in many regions of the work, marriage offices and agencies with the role of marriage brokers have become increasingly dominant in cross border marriage market in recent years. The hope of high profit in this area has made these companies a large market. In fact, mediating between people with the intention of marriage is not a new concept. In traditional sense, there have always been a mediator; a third person between individuals with the potential of marriage in many cultures of the world. In cross border marriages, corporations which undertake a critical role such as marriage offices and agencies appear as modern time manifestations of these traditional matchmakers. Although profit oriented, corporate marriage offices and agencies are criticized that they make foreign
- 134. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 120 brides in cross border marriages an important factor of international markets- same as selling and purchasing goods in international markets- and marketing marriage with women wastefully, people realizing this job or advocating them explain the reason of their existence as simply building a romantic web or bridge between people (Foreign Brides Research 2007: 6-7) and point to this traditional form. Yet, while the families of couples to be married in traditional form show their appreciation for the matchmakers with a gift most of the time, modern matchmakers perform this job for serious amounts of money and for profit. In addition, again in the traditional form while mediating or matchmaking is more related to gender, thus women, in today’s cross border marriages marriage brokers are mostly men. On the other hand, applications of ordering bride via mail vary depending on the region. For instance, in western countries, men pick the women they would like to marry from a photo or video catalogue prepared by the marriage brokers and the couple correspond with each other until the day they met each other face to face (Chia-wen Lu 2005: 282). Kawaguchi&Lee (2012: 8-9) narrates how marriage brokers in Asia organize these marriages within a Professional relation web beyond personal relations: There are brokers in both countries between which marriages made between people. The first broker group finds the men in the host country to which women will come to get married. Other broker group finds women the region which they define as source country (China, Vietnam and Philippines). When the number of women and men who want to get married is enough, two broker groups contact with each other and brokers in the host country arrange a trip to the source country for grooms to be. Women and men meet via these trips in small groups until they decide to get married. If the couples agree with each other, they collect documents required to get married legally in the source country. Then, the groom returns to his country and applies for legal proceedings required for the marriage to be valid in this country too and for the bride to get a visa. In this process, groom makes three payments to brokers, to the girls’ family and for legal transactions. This amount is about 10 thousand dollars. On the other hand, during marriage preparations, the relation between the woman and the man is minimum as the process is fast: approximately 10 days of marriage trip and migration operations of woman for approximately 6 months. In addition, as woman and man often don’t speak the same language, interpreters rented by brokers mediate the communication between them. In Taiwan, not only the groom but also the groom’s family meets the bride candidate found by marriage brokers (Chia-wen Lu 2005: 282). In the path of this theoretical frame, marriages realized via the instrumentality of brokers in Syria-Turkey borders will be explained. 2. Social Exclusion, Poverty and Ethnicity Marriage via the help of brokers is related with poverty which is a result of exposition to intense social exclusion2 and ethnical discrimination – and which affects women more- in Qamişlo, a border city of Syria in which field study was realized. Historically, the Kurdish identity has always been perceived as a big problem and a “threat” by the State of Syria which first became a state in the beginning of 20th Century. This perception resulted in various measurements taken affecting also the daily life. However, systematic socio-economic discrimination the Kurdish people were exposed to in Qamişlo presents too much complication depending on their status of citizenship. Kurds in Syria have three separate 2 Bergman (akt. Alacahan and Duman 2011:2) defines social exclusion as corruption or dysfunction of basic social systems guaranteeing complete citizenship. In addition, she classifies basic areas for participation as democratic law system provisinf civil integration, labor markets providing economic integration, wealth system providing social integration and family and community system providing inter-human integration.
- 135. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 121 citizenship status which provide generally different rights and freedom. These are Kurds with identity cards, which are in full citizen status, foreigners who have some basic rights and who are accepted as partial citizens and maktumin Kurds who have no rights and freedom. While only maktumin or foreigners are left out of the scope of citizenship, structural discrimination is imposed on all Kurds in general. Manifestations of this discrimination in daily life are found in many areas from education right to Access to health services, participation in economic life. In addition, it should be noted that transfers between three mentioned statuses is not possible. Thus, there is a marriage prohibition between citizens of Syria and foreigners or maktumin and such marriage ceremonies are both unofficial and the marriage is not valid in front of the state. Syrian citizenship which is clearly based on gender discrimination is obtained via the father. A child of a foreigner or maktumin father and a Syrian mother is recorded as a maktumin. Newborns cannot share the citizen status of their mothers. In spite of laws restricting marriage, couples who made such marriages are registered as single. When it comes to Kurds, attainability of citizenship from father by law is clearly violated. Because as the child of a Syrian citizen man married to a maktumin Kurdish woman, the child of a foreigner father and a maktumin mother is also included automatically in the “lower” status. Thus, although kin marriage is preferred, this discrimination affects the rate of kin marriage because citizen or foreigner men don’t want their child from a marriage with a maktumin woman to have a disadvantaged identity:3 A maktumin and a foreigner may get married but nobody wants to marry a maktumin woman. There was a man, he had identity. He loved a maktumin woman for 4 years, he died for her but he couldn’t marry her because she had no identity. He even got engaged. But they said if he married, his children would have no identity. He left the woman, finished the engagement. If the woman has identity, it is okay. They also cannot marry officially. If a foreigner and a maktumin get married, they are not married officially. For example, my husband hired lawyer if he is foreigner, it started approximately 8 years ago. He would hire a lawyer, give some money- they gave 5000 leaves at that time- could have a red card for the woman and make her a foreigner in order that the children be foreigners (Woman, 28, from Qamişlo). Primarily economic conditions, discriminative policies in citizenship and property rights in Syria and inequalities in Access to resources and legal regulations regarding marriage force Qamişlo women to cross border marriages. These reasons have had influence on Qamişlo women to choose Nusaybin men to get married since 1980s. Also, that many young men “go to mountain” due to national Kurdish movement or make internal migration in Syria due to economic reasons corrupted the demographical balance between women and men in Qamişlo. In addition, due to cultural borders with Arabs, Kurdish families in Qamişlo 3 This situation experienced by Syrian Kurds calls up the implementation to which Israel citizen Arabs were exposed. Halakha/ Traditional Jewish law based on Sacred texts don’t allow marriage among groups. So, marriage of a Jewish woman with a non-Jewish man and marriage of a Jewish man with a non-Jewish woman are not legal. In fact, since 1948, which is its year of foundation, marriage, which is endogamic in Israel has been arranged and maintained by the state (A questionnaire study made in 2007 by Geocarography Instititue revealed that marriage of a Jewish woman with an Arab men is considered as equal to national treason (www.ynetnews.com/articles/0740). Rate of Israel citizen Arabs to general demography is %20. One of the main concerns of Israel state the marriage of the Jewish and the Arab, so the state took a series of legal and administrative measures against the possibility of close relations between Jews and Arabs. That Arabs are allowed to live in only certain districts and educational institutions, in which the young people communicate most are separated are the primary measurements. In 2003, High Court of Israel approved the law restricting the marriages between Arabs of Palestine and the Israeli. Thus, the court accepted that the Palestine people marrying the Israeli and attaining Israel citizenship are threats to security (www.sondevir.com/dunya). In addition a local administration declared that they formed a tea of psychologists to give consultation to young people and the duty of the team was to detect young girls having affairs with Arabs and to “save” them (Jonathan Cook: “How to Prevent Jewish Girls from Dating Arab Boys?” (http://www.dunyabulteni.net/?aType=yazarHaber&ArticleID=11399). It is possible to list many actual and legal discrimination examples to restrict the marriages between two groups. That Israel approved this law particularly against Arabs is closely related to their definition of Palestine Arabs.
- 136. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 122 don’t want their girls to get married with an Arab men. Thus, diversity in women-men demography rate is another reason which forces Qamişlo women to get married to Nusaybin men. In summary, systematic discrimination based on socio-cultural exclusion and ethnicity against Kurds appear as basic reasons of Kurdish poverty in Syria. Especially, inclusion or exclusion patterns of Kurds in Syria into our out of citizenship restrict Access to rights and opportunities most of the time and this situation forces Kurds, especially women to develop survival strategies. Cross border marriage, which is one of these strategies generated marriage brokers. 3. From Arranged Marriages to Marriage Brokers Marriage brokers undertaking the role of marriage brokers4 between Nusaybin and Qamişlo emerged recently although not being too widespread. In fact, cross border marriages between Nusaybin and Qamişlo are realized either by arranged marriages or intermediation of acquaintances within the same ethnical group. If the girl’s and the boy’s families are from the same kin, they may go and see the girl as the parties already know each other. If there is nobody suitable for kin marriage relatives and acquaintances may be requested to search for a girl. This pattern is valid for many past and present day marriages. However, different from past practices, Kurds in Qamişlo cannot “dare to ask” for the girl’s marriage from Kurds of Nusaybin. Therefore, in Nusaybin the girl’s family doesn’t prefer giving permission for marriage and the girl doesn’t want to g oto Syria by marriage. As the answer they will get is certain, there is no asking for girl’s hand to marriage from the Turkey side of the border. Therefore, Kurds of Nusaybin are “confident” of themselves in asking for girls as much as the Kurds are “timid” in asking for girls from Nusaybin. In addition, men looking for spouses may be single and men looking for a second spouse may also apply to these traditional matchmakers. However, the indermediators applied by men who don’t know anybody in Qamişlo or who want to marry o woman younger than himself are marriage brokers. In this sample, the source country from which women are found/chosen is Syria, the country of host men is Turkey. In addition, marriage brokers in Qamişlo are not corporate as marriage offices or agencies of which we hear often today. As in the internet sample, personal relations web is used rather than technology. In Kurdish regions of Syria- Qamişlo, Haseke and Amude cities- broker offices are reported to exist. It seems that the intense marriage demand from Turkey side of the border made brokerage attractive. Besides, the amount of money is stated as 10000 TRY for women in 20-25 age group, 75000 TRY for 25-30 age group and 5000 TRY for 30 and older women. Brokers, give half of the money they received from the job of intermediating depending on the age of woman to the girl’s father as bride price and keep the other half as commission: Some of them come by making a normal marriage with their kin, some of them come as cheaters, for money. I was there two weeks ago, I left the doctor’s Office and we went to taxi station. We were going to my aunt’s house. I saw, the taxi driver mentioned a man as “he is Turkish like you, too”. The man was shouting, he was old at about 80 years old. I asked what for he was shouting, he explained. He said as houses have brokers, girls have brokers too. For instance, the man goes to a broker and says “find me a girl as I described”. He says “ok, I will find but you will give me 3000 TRY”. The man gave 3000 TRY to the broker and he found a girl. Broker also doesn’t know who is the girl, is she a thief or a Gypsy? They demand, broker finds. The broker asked someone and they said they had a girl. The girl’s father wanted 6000 TRY. They agreed anyway. Then the girl’s father told the girl “the man is old, go with the man to the 4 News dated 2011 about marriages between Turkey- Syria narrated that the marriage brokers present the catalogues they prepared with the photos of Syrian women to groom candidates in Turkey (http://t24.com.tr/haber/suriyeden-turkiyeye-kataloglu-gelin- ticareti/186720). A similar information is also narrated by Kaya (2008). However, during the field study it was narrated that the marriage brokers in Qamişlo realized this job using personal relations.
- 137. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 123 door of the house. We will call you after we receive our money from the broker and you will leave the man and come back”. The broker also didn’t know who is the girl, where does she live. Just his father went and said he had a daughter (Laughing). Like, I go to the house broker and say I have a house and I want to rent. Because of poverty. Anyway, the old man took the girl, they came to the door. The girl’s father received the money from broker and called her daughter. He said “where are you?”, the girl said “In Turkey door”. He said “Make up a lie and come back, we received our money”. The girls said to old man “I have a document missing, you wait here I go and tale it, there are two hours until the door is closed”. The man waited until evening, nobody comes. The girl took the money, God knows where did she run, to Damascus or Aleppo. The old man said to somebody “Find me 1-2 roamers, I will give then 2000 TRY, at least they take back my 4000 TRY”. If he goes to the state he cannot take his money back. Police doesn’t give his money back. He has to get married, he is old, for example his son and bride don’t look after him (Woman, about 40, from Nusaybin). Marriages made via the instrumentality of a broker in Qamişlo are not reliable as can be understood from the sample case and they are considered as marriages with “theft” risk. Negative thoughts regarding the marriage made via the instrumentality of brokers affect most of the women who make cross border marriages. This situation caused the generation of stereotypes regarding the Kurdish women coming from Qamişlo. In parallel to the consideration that these women marry for money, there is a concern that the women will run away or steal money: An old man went to marry a girl in Syria. He found the girl via a broker. Her name was Fatma. He gave 25.000 TRY bride price for the girl. While bringing the girl, her mother, father and uncle came, too. Expenses were included in the bride price. I don’t know if it was true but they told so. Her relatives stayed for 3-4 days. They said they had an eye on the gold. One day the old man went to bazaar, he came and both the girl and the gold were gone. Her father and mother took the girl and gold and ran away (Women from Nusaybin, 50 years old). A similar example regarding foreign brides is narrated by Constable (2005: 1-2) from a prejudiced short story named “Missing Heels” which was written by Yoko Yawada in 1998 and in which Japan MOB brides were defined: … in recent years women, who are a lower species, are brought here from poor regions of the country and men show too much interest in these. These women restricted the marriage opportunities of the women of liberal countries. These women who marry only for money ….. (those coming from poor villages) divorce when they gather enough money and return to their countries. It is quite difficult to teach these uneducated women what it means for a man and woman to live together. However, whatever they do- they don’t have any other choice under these conditions- poverty forces these women to do this. According to Williams (2010: 88), this kind of stereotypes may have a tiny bit of truth in them. However, these judgments may cause destructions for people realizing international marriages. Most of the time, mail order bride and human trafficking may be painted with the same brush. Although this definition doesn’t reflect the truth as it is, many women who want to get married may become sex slaves. In this sense, mail- order bride marriages may be defined as human trafficking. Thus, this kind of frauds which cause difficult results for women may cause the generation of various stereotypes and confusion in people regarding women marrying in this pattern. Indeed, it is seen that in late period marriages, both the emphasis of bride price and the marriages via the instrumentality of brokers cause the generation of various biases against Syrian brides and this affects all Syrian women. These judgments narrated via a case in an interview with a Syrian bride:
- 138. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 124 There was a hairdresser here, married, mother of three children. When the woman first came here she said she was Syrian. But nobody knows where she was really from. She was Kurdish but nobody knows from where. She came, mother of 3 children, she was a hairdresser here. Then she eloped to a married man. They started here right at that moment to gossip saying “so are the Syrian women”. They told women of Syria are chasing men, they don’t think about anything but men. Because the woman was bad, they said she was definitely Syrian. I don’t accept it. The woman wasn’t Syrian, she lied. I came here one day (to hairdresser), another woman came to. She said “why did she elope, so are the Syrian girls, they are dirty, they wouldn’t have come here if they weren’t dirty. A married woman wouldn’t elope to a married man”. (Gets very angry). No the woman wasn’t Syrian. Even if she were Syrian, if a person makes a mistake, is everybody the same? (Woman from Qamişlo, about 40 years old). Another example that these stereotypes include all women appears in the Black Sea region with another aspect. As known, after the former USSR broke up, there was an intense human trafficking between the countries which won their independence and Turkey, especially the Black Sea region as the borders were relatively bent. Religious attitude of the people of region, thet the women were generally headscarfed and limited men-women relations created a distinct opportunity for women who came here for trade. The opening of the Gates was also an advantage for Black Sea men who had to cover a distance before for “prostitution”. However, this situation disturbed the people of region and caused the generation of a prejudice not only against those making suitcase trading but also against all tourists. Women coming from these countries were then “Natacha” for the local people. Old men complained about their children and women complained about their husbands. These stereotypes were so reproduced that; even the local women who weren’t wearing headscarves started covering their heads in order not to be confused with foreigners. Because any woman without a headscarf was very likely to be assaulted in the street (Hann&Bellér-Hann 1998: 250). On the other hand, another interview held in Nusaybin emphasizes there are woman “markets” in Syria and points the materialization of marriage and women’s body. There are (In Qamişlo) women markets. A 60-70 year-old men goes there when he wants to get married, finds a broker. He gives a certain amount of money and the woman he gets is 18-19 years old. (Man from Nusaybin, 30 years old). Generally, these kinds of marriages directly imply materialization as they are considered as “sale/purchase” of women. According to Robinson (1996), if the migration becomes a part of marriage agreement and if cultural, social, even sometimes “racial” incompatibility is attached to this, a commercial aspect emerges in marriage. This marriage has a commercial appearance as man purchasing woman. These materialized marriages are considered as misuse of marriage. Some marriages named as “Mail order brides”, poor women, brides who particularly work in sex trade and brides purchased by men are evaluated under this category. Hongzen Wang and Shu-Ming Chang (2002: 109) state that in the sense of cross border marriages, materialization has two aspects related to each other. Authors primarily define any kind of economic benefit oriented act in migration flow as materialization. In their study related to this, they accept cross border marriage as an act from which people gain profit in a way. According to them, another aspect of materialization is people’s transformation into a commercial article. Thus, when both meanings are combined, it means individuals introduce their presentable features to the market for benefits. In addition, as cross border marriage market grows, more and more people are included in this market every day. Consequently, as in a capitalist regime, price, quality and punctual delivery have become obligations in this field. In such a competition environment, many women accept marriage against low prices in order to show
- 139. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 125 that they are good enough to be married. Wang and Chang (2002: 109-110) also determine that in case cross border marriages continue to be managed by profit oriented agencies, this will be transformed into materialized operations beyond marriage. According to them, this will become a market that directs itself according to supply and demand. 4. Conclusion In traditional sense, there have always been a mediator; a third person between individuals with the potential of marriage in many cultures. In such traditional relation patterns, the aim is spiritual gain rather than a material gain or expectation. For instance in the Islamic culture, mediating the marriage of two people gives a spiritual profit to the mediator, which is defined as “good deed”. None the less, marriage agencies or brokers which appear in the 20th Century and undertake the role of marriage broker cross border, thus inter-cultural area realize this role directly for profit. In cross border marriages between Nusaybin and Qamişlo which are located across each other and border regions of Syria and Turkey, traditional arranged (mediated) marriages continue but there are also mediated marriages which gives marriage a commercial aspect and which has become an important market. No doubt, poverty into which Syrian Kurds were forced due to the discrimination they are exposed to both increases the demand for cross border marriages and prepares the basis for the emerge of other functional actors. Turkey has the same meaning with West for Syrian Kurds and all ways should be applied to reach here. In summary, marriage offices and agencies or brokers which we may define as cross border modern matchmakers are relations types that emerge depending on the relation with poverty. Thus, unless the poverty conditions of both Nusaybin and Qamişlo Kurds get well, the demand for marriage brokers will continue to increase. References Alacahan, O. & Duman, B. (2011). Dışlanma, Ayrımcılık, Mezhep ve Etnikler Arası Eşitsizlikler. Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 1, 1-29. Chia-Wen Lu, M. (2005). Commercially Arranged Marriage Migration: Case Studies of Cross-border Marriages in Taiwan. Indian Journal of Gender Studies. 275-303. Constable, N. (2005). Cross-Border Marriages. Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Foreign Brides Research-Psychosocial Profile and Perspectives of Foreign Brides (2007). By the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM), Supported by the Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst e.V. (EED). Hann, C. & Bellér-Hann, I. (1998). Markets, Morality and Modernity in North-East Turkey. T.M. Kawaguchi, D., S. Lee (2012). Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriage and Female Immigration. Working Paper. Kaya, M. (2008). Dünden Bugüne Çok Eşlilik. İstanbul: Çıra. Kojima, Yu (2001). In the Business of Cultural Reproduction: Theoretical Implications of the Mail-Order Bride
- 140. Ayşe Yıldırım /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 126 Özbudun, S. (2003). Kültür Halleri-Geçmişte, Ötelerde, Günümüzde. Ankara: Ütopya Phenomenon. Women’s Studies International Forum, 24, 199–210. Robinson, K. (1996): Of Mail-Order Brides and "Boys' Own" Tales: Representations of Asian-Australian Marriages. Feminist Review, 5, 53-68. So, A. Y. (2003). Cross-Border Families in Hong Kong-The Role of Social Class and Politics. Critical Asian Studies, 35 (4), 515-534. Ulutaş, Çağla U. & Alican Kalfa (2009). Göçün Kadınlaşması ve Göçmen Kadınların Örgütlenme Deneyimleri. Fe Dergi: Feminist Eleştiri 1 (2), 13-28 Wang, Hong-Zen& Shu-Ming Chang (2002): The Commodıfıcatıon of Internatıonal Marrıages: Cross- Border Marrıage Busıness ın Taıwan and Vıet Nam. International Migration, 40 (6), 93-116. Williams, L. (2010). Global Marriage-Cross-Border Marriage Migration in Global Context. UK: University of Kent. Yuval-Davis, N. (2003). Cinsiyet ve Millet. İstanbul: İletişim.
- 141. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 127 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies A Discourse Analysis on Turkey’s Justice and Development Party Government on the Human Rights of Women Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu* Kocaeli University, Department of International Relations, Turkey Abstract Over the past 12 years of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, Turkish public has witnessed many statements by state authorities on private life and sexuality. The President of Turkey (previously Prime Minister), due to his Islamist and conservative roots, declared abortion to be murder, encouraged marriage at an early age, demonized singlehood, insisted that every family shall have at least 3 children and excluded birth control expenditures from the coverage of social security. However, press news indicate that 853 women were killed by their male family members in 2010-2013, and the government had limited remarks on the issue. Only very recently, the Minister for Family and Social Policy claimed that no women were killed under the protection of the state. It seems that although the government finds it convenient to interfere with private lives, there is no obvious effort to stop the murdering of women or imposing adequate sentences on domestic violence. However, in addition to Turkey’s international obligations arising from international human rights treaties, in its landmark decision Opuz v. Turkey (2009) the European Court of Human Rights declared that the failure of the state to protect women from domestic violence constitutes the violation of the right to life; violation of the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment; and violation of prohibition of discrimination. This paper aims at an analysis of the speeches and declarations made by government authorities on violence against women in order to find out how women’s basic human rights are denied by the Turkish state. It will be argued that, the latest legislation on protection of women from domestic violence is not an outcome of reasonable political discussions; it is rather an attempt to compromise tradition, which is reflected in the speeches of the public authorities, and international law. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: AKP, women, gender discourse, neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism, violence against women * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-262-3031624; fax: +90-262-3031503. E-mail address: aysegul.gokalp@kocaeli.edu.tr
- 142. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 128 1. Introduction Much has been said about Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its gender policies. Most of these analyses are on AKP’s neoliberal and neoconservative policies and their reflection on women (see, i.a., Acar&Altunok, 2012 and 2013; Ayata&Tütüncü, 2008; Buğra, 2012; Çitak&Tür, 2008; Yazıcı, 2012; Yeğenoğlu&Coşar, 2012). All these scholars contend that AKP is the outcome of the rising political Islam of late 1970s, the neoliberal policies of post-1980 economic and political restructuring, and globalization of the world economy. The party is a fine combination of neoliberalism and neoconservatism; like all the preceding post-1980 governments, the AKP has adopted an “economically liberal and culturally conservative discourse (Yeğenoğlu&Coşar, 2012: 180). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the most prominent figure of the party, verbalized this combination of ideologies by announcing at the International Symposium on Conservatism and Democracy in January 2004, that his party was laying the foundations of conservative democracy in Turkey. In 2010, Hüseyin Çelik, who served as Minister for Culture Minister for National Education under successive AKP governments, admitted that "The AK Party is a conservative democratic party. The AK Party's conservatism is limited to moral and social issues” (Hurriyet Daily News, 28.03.2010). The AKP came to power in 2002, by proposing itself as a new, clean alternative to the stagnated Turkish politics. Indeed, party officials insistence on abbreviating the Party’s name as AK Party (ak= white) in order to emphasize its cleanness has been noteworthy. A general overview of its founders indicates that it is a combination of businessmen, small entrepreneurs and previous politicians. Some of its founders, including Abdullah Gül (later to be the 11th President of Turkey), and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (later to be Prime Minister for 3 terms and the 12th President since August 2014 – the first one to be popularly to the post) were from the pro-Islamist and anti-EU Milli Görüş (National View) tradition. Erdoğan was saying back in 2003 that “he has taken off the Milli Görüş shirt”, while the AKP was advertising itself as a new political party in line with neoliberal values, in favour of EU membership, and respectful to fundamental rights and individual freedoms. This article is not aiming to analyse the idiosyncratic combination of neo-liberalism and neo- conservatism of AKP. Rather, the main question this paper will try to find out is how ‘conservative- democracy’ has its repercussions on violence against women. In order to do so, the speeches and declarations of the prominent government officials and leading AKP figures will be analysed in order to see if the ‘conservative-democratic’ discourse is reflected at the government policies on violence against women. The statements of eminent government officials will be examined as they are reflected in the newspapers and news web-sites. 2. What has Turkey achieved in terms of women’s human rights? “The project of modernization in a Muslim country takes a very different turn from Western modernity in that it imposes a political will to ‘westernize’ the cultural code, modes of life and gender identities” (Göle, 1995: 21). Indeed, the Kemalist revolution created a new gender regime by introducing a secular system and Westernized modes of conduct. The new nation-building model emphasized the “new-women”, who were publicly visible and educated and equal to the men (in the public sphere at least), in contrast to the women who were confined to the private sphere in the old regime. Thus, the image of women represented the rupture between the old Islamic/Ottoman past and the modern, new, westernized Turkish Republic. However, patriarchal morality and social codes on women’s behaviour were hard to eliminate, and kept their hegemony. Religious ceremonies of marriage, child marriages and polygyny continued
- 143. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 129 especially in the Eastern and South Eastern parts of Turkey and among families within the lower socio- economic classes. It was not until the 1980s that Turkish women would indulge in a new wave of feminism and address their own problems such as domestic violence, harassment, honour killings, virginity examinations, family-oriented gender rules and the patriarchal hegemony. One of the key achievements of the feminist movement in Turkey was the Domestic Violence Act (1998). The Act introduced legal sanctions for not only abusive and violent husbands but for the male members of the family. It also made it possible for the prosecutors to issue protection orders, providing shelters for the victims, perpetrators to be kept away from the family home for a specific time period, confiscation of his arms, and payment of alimony, and in case of noncompliance with the court order, imprisonment for up to six months (Aslan-Akman&Tütüncü, 2013: 93). In addition to the strengthening feminist movement, the EU candidacy also contributed to policy reform in gender equality. The EU’s conditionality, together with Turkey’s feminist movement, resulted in important amendments in the Constitution, and adoption of the new Civil, Penal Codes and the Labour Act, establishment of the Women-Men Equal Opportunities Commission, approval of the Istanbul Convention and adoption of the new Law on the Protection of the Family, and approval of the optional protocol of the CEDAW which led the way for direct application to the CEDAW Committee for women who are exposed to discrimination. With the constitutional amendments in 2001 and 2004, some gender equality provisions were introduced. In 2001, the clause “The family is the foundation of the Turkish society and based on the equality between the spouses” was added. In 2004, the statement “[...] Men and women have equal rights. The State shall have the obligation to ensure that this equality exists in practice”, was introduced and in 2010, “Measures taken for this purpose should not be regarded against the principle of equality” was added after this sentence. The famous clause on superiority of international law was also included in 2004 amendments, stating that the provisions of international agreements that Turkey is a signatory (such as CEDAW or the Istanbul Convention) will bear the force of law, and in case of a conflict between domestic law and a provision of an international treaty that Turkey is a signatory, Turkey has to follow the provisions of the international agreement. The new Civil Code was adopted in 2001. It established the legal marriage age as seventeen for both men and women and contended that no one can be forced to marry. It also abolished the concept of men being the “head of family”, granted women the right to use their own last names along with their husbands’ (in 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled that women can continue using their own last names without the husband’s surname), established that spouses need not obtain each other’s permission to work, and granted equal rights to spouses with regards to selection of the residence, matters concerning children, and distribution of property in case of divorce. It is worth mentioning that while Civil Code was negotiated in the Turkish Parliament, there was serious opposition to these clauses, particularly from the nationalist- Islamist male parliamentarians. With the New Penal Code which took effect in 2005, sexual crimes were considered crimes against individuals and their penalty was aggravated; the woman/girl distinction was abolished; with regards to sexual abuse, those under the age of fifteen were considered children; marital rape was recognized; rape for the purpose of marriage was considered a crime; polygamy was forbidden; criminal sanctions were brought against those who practices religious marriage ceremony without an official marriage first (which is severely undermined by the Constitutional Court ruling in 2015 which legalized religious marriages without obtaining a civil marriage); the practice of cancelling the penalty in case the abductee and the abductor gets married was abolished; aggravated life imprisonment was brought for honour killings.
- 144. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 130 Under the Labour Law which entered into force in 2003, no discrimination based on sex or similar reasons is permissible in the employment relationship; the principle of equal pay for equal jobs has been adopted; it was also established that female employees cannot be dismissed due to pregnancy or birth and nursing leaves. Maternity leave was increased to sixteen weeks, which is the standard in EU. Thus, new arrangements were introduced to prevent the violation of women’s rights which are prevalent in the working life, and to increase women’s participation in the workforce. 3. Analysing the AKP’s discourse on gender As Yeğenoğlu and Coşar (2012) point out, AKP’s three terms in government (2002-2007; 207-2011; 2011-2015) witnessed increasing conservation in domestic politics, which is mainly reflected on the gender policies. As the hopes for EU membership started to fade away during its second term, the AKP’s rhetoric on social and cultural domains started to be dominated by a religious and conservative discourse. This is a period in which the concepts and phrases such as “family”, “motherhood”, “anti-feminism”, “abortion is murder”, “at least 3 children” and “gender justice” dominated AKP’s discourse on women. This discourse is in line with the neoconservative perspective, which sees the state as having an interventionist role in the functioning of the society, and “identifies the state, including law, with the task of setting the moral- religious compass for society, and indeed for the world” (Brown, 2006: 697, cited in Acar and Altunok, 2013: 15). Gender-based problems are intertwined, and although it is hard to disentangle one from the other, this section will analyse AKP’s discourse on women under three headings: discrimination against women, domestic violence, and family and reproduction. 3.1. AKP’s discourse on discrimination against women One of the key demands of the feminist movement in Turkey since the 1990s was the establishment of a commission on gender equality, and its establishment was proposed in 1998. The 2003 Progress Report of the European Commission was pointing out to the cases of discrimination in Turkey, and the necessity of a commission as such was recommended by the UN CEDAW committee in 2005. The establishment of a commission was realized in 2009, albeit the commission’s name was adopted not as the “equality” commission, rather, “Women-Men Equal Opportunities Commission”, emphasizing not the equality between men and women, but the equality of opportunity. Similarly, the office of the State Minister Responsible for Women and Family was abolished in 2012, and replaced by the Ministry of Family and Social Policy. In his statement, the then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, claimed that AKP was a conservative- democratic party, and family was important to them. On November 24th, 2014, at the International Women and Justice Summit organised by Kadın ve Demokrasi Derneği (KADEM), Erdoğan, as the President of Turkey, said “You cannot bring women and men into an equal position; this is against nature. You cannot subject a pregnant woman to the same working conditions as a man. You cannot make a mother who has to breastfeed her child equal to a man. You cannot make women do everything men do like the communist regimes did… This is against her delicate nature.” He went on saying that "They [feminists] talk about equality between men and women. The correct thing is equality among women and equality among men. But what is particularly essential is women's equality before the justice. What women need is to be equivalent, rather than equal; that is, justice." He added that Islam dignifies women as mothers but feminists do not accept the concept of motherhood; but those who understand are enough, (referring to a blurred “we”) “we’ll continue down this path with them” (Today’s Zaman, 24.11.2014).. This statement was not news to the public opinion, though. In 2010, when he was
- 145. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 131 responding to the criticisms of women activists on his continuous stress on family and motherhood, the then-Prime Minister answered by arguing that “women and men were different in nature and that they should complement one another rather than compete for equal treatment, and declared that he did not believe in equality between women and men, but rather, was in favour of equality of opportunity” (Altunok&Acar, 2013: 17). Several other leading figures of AKP are also known to be opposing the feminist movement, such as Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat, previous secretary-general and one of the founders of the AKP (later resigned from the party), who claimed that the AKP had a significantly different outlook toward women, and AKP did not support the conflict between women and men that is created by the feminist thought. The women of the AKP had not been and would never be enslaved to feminist ideology (Ntvmsnbc, 05.05.2008) Another example could be found at a public service ad prepared for broadcasting by KADEM for March 8th, 2015. In the ad, President Erdoğan is saying that “Violence against women is betrayal to humanity”. It is a wonder if he chose the words because they rhyme in Turkish (şiddet-ihanet), since International Human Rights Law does not define a term as “betrayal to humanity”. On the contrary, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in Opuz v. Turkey (2009) that the failure to effectively protect women from domestic violence can amount to torture and inhuman treatment by the state and the state’s violation of the European Convention on Human Rights Article 14, prohibition of discrimination, even if unintentional. One of the obvious indications of the government’s disregard of violence against women as a human rights violation was seen in the declaration made by the Head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, Mehmet Görmez, in August 2013. While signing the Collaboration Protocols for the Contribution of Religion Workers to Prevent Violence Against Women and Protection of Family, which was funded by the UN Population Fund, Görmez claimed that the Directorate of Religious Affairs was supporting this project since 2010, however, he has decided not to spend any of the UN’s money on it any longer, because the UN should use that money for preventing crimes against humanity and homicides. He went on saying that they (religion workers) had faith, resources and spirituality to tell the society about violence against women and compassion for humans (Bianet, 22.08.2013). This declaration is an indication of not seeing violence against women as an important human rights problem and as an issue to be solved by faith in the private realm. It is also in line with the conservative argument, which puts issues of morality to the fore in overcoming the problems of the society. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that the previous-deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinc, claimed in 2014 that women should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times. In July 2015, he said to a female MP: "Madam be quiet! You as a woman, be quiet!" (Telegraph, 29.07.2015) 3.2. Domestic Violence In terms of domestic violence, the AKP has taken several concrete steps. First of all, a Parliamentary Investigation Committee was set up in 2005 in order to deal with the reasons for and taking precautions against custom and honour killings, and violence towards women and children. Following the report of the Committee, which finds the situation “tragic”, the Prime Ministry Circular No. 2006/17 was released, which was endorsing cooperation among the bureaucrats, civil society organizations and the media. The then- Prime Minister Erdoğan met regularly with several women’s groups’ representatives in order to discuss violence against women. Meanwhile, the Law on Municipalities was amended and put into force in 2005, making the opening of shelters for victims of domestic violence obligatory for metropolitan municipalities and municipalities with
- 146. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 132 more than 50.000 dwellers. In 2013, this necessity was changed to 100.000 dwellers, and the Minister for Family and Social Policy explained that, as of 2013, 32 shelters were operating under the municipalities, whereas 90 shelters were opened by the Ministry itself, and 2 private shelters were run by civil society organizations (Response to parliamentary question, 18.12.2013). It is also worth mentioning that the Ministry and the government prefer to use the word “guesthouses” instead of “shelters”. However, AKP’s stance towards violence against women gradually evolved from willingness to cooperate with women’s organizations towards excluding feminist organizations and taking up the issue with reference to culture, tradition and religion. The demands coming from the feminist groups, such as “the definition of honour crimes … as aggravated homicide; the penalization of discrimination based on sexual orientation; the criminalization of virginity testing under all circumstances; and the extension of the legal abortion period” (WWHR 2005: 15) have been ignored. As the feminist organizations were not regarded as collocutors in dealing with violence against women, KADEM, an organization ideologically close to AKP is gaining importance. In the previously mentioned International Women and Justice Summit organised by KADEM, Erdoğan brought up the issue of domestic violence by claiming that he was speaking as a Muslim, and no such cruelty as violence against women belongs to Islam. A devout Muslim would not commit violence against women (Hurriyet Daily News, 24.11.2014) In several occasions, Erdoğan has emphasized the importance of the family in overcoming violence against women. In 2009, at the AKP’s congress in Ankara, while referring to the murder of Münevver Karabulut, a high school student who was violently killed by her boyfriend, Erdoğan firstly blamed the media for cultural erosion, and then claimed that speaking as a father; he thinks the parents shall have some responsibilities. If children (meaning; daughters) are left alone, they will be involved in actions which would shame the family (“ya davulcuya ya zurnacıya kaçar”) (Milliyet, 20.07.2009). While giving a speech on the same murder, the previous Istanbul Chief of Police, Celalettin Cerrah also claimed that it was the responsibility of the family to keep their daughter under control (Hurriyet, 26.04.2009). The reactions of the leading government officials to the Opuz ruling of the ECHR was also significant. The State Minister for Women and Family, Selma Aliye Kavaf, and the head of the Women-Men Equality of Opportunity Commission, Güldal Akşit, reacted to the decision by claiming that they will oppose to the ruling because Opuz was one single case, and legal regulations in Turkey were sufficient for protecting women. In 2011, the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention was signed with the purpose of protecting women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute, and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence. Turkey became the first country to put the Convention in force by adopting the new law (6284) for the Protection of the Family and Prevention of Violence against Women on 8th March 2012. This new law widened the scope of protection by addressing the issue of violence against all women irrespective of their marital status; married, divorced, single, engaged or with a boyfriend. However, this aspect of the law was widely opposed by the conservative groups in the Parliament and eventually, the name of the law was accepted as the “Law on protection of the Family and Prevention of Violence Against Women.” Hence, the message that the Parliament gave was that the family has priority over women and women are valuable if they are within the family; this contradicts with the soul of the Istanbul Convention. 3.3. Family and Reproduction During the discussions for a new Penal Code in 2004, a major political crisis broke out between the Turkish government and the EU because of the AKP government’s desire to introduce a bill criminalizing adultery, although adultery has not been a criminal act since 1998. The State Minister for Women and Family defended criminalizing adultery, stating: ‘We cannot give up our own values just because we want
- 147. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 133 to join the EU. […] We have to respect the values of Turkish society” (Zaman, 28 August 2004). The then- Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced the withdrawal of the proposal after a meeting with EU enlargement commissioner in Brussels, however, he later expressed his anger over the situation. Referring to the women’s groups that were protesting the proposal, and their slogan ‘our bodies and sexuality belong to ourselves,’ he said: ‘There were even those who marched to Ankara, carrying placards that do not suit the Turkish woman. I cannot applaud behaviour that does not suit our moral values and traditions. […] A marginal group cannot represent the Turkish woman.’(İlkkaracan, 2008: 41-42). Woman, in Erdoğan’s discourse, is not an activist but a mother. Both as the Prime Minister and later as the President, Erdoğan has mentioned the sanctity of motherhood in several occasions. In the Third Congress on Women in Local Government in 2007, he stated that there is no status comparable to motherhood, and that is the reason why “our civilization has placed the heaven under the feet of the mothers, and not those of the fathers”, referring to the well-known hadith (Çitak&Tür, 2008: 464). In his message for the Mother’s Day in 2008, Erdoğan emphasized that mothers, who are responsible for the upbringing of the children with love and tender and healthy both mentally and physically, are the pillars of the family and social life. He went on saying that social responsibilities of mothers are not biological only, but mothers are also the shapers of our future as a nation and carriers of our traditions and customs (IHA, 11.05.2008). In 2014, he said "Our religion (Islam) has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood” (Today’s Zaman, 24.11.2014). The Minister of Health had joined the ‘womanhood equals motherhood’ assertions by claiming that “mothers should not put another career other than motherhood at the centre of their lives. They should put raising good generations at the centre of their attention” (Hurriyet Daily News, 02.01.2015). Erdoğan not only praises motherhood, but on several occasions, he condemned abortion. He called abortion as ‘murder’ and said the practice should be outlawed. “It makes no difference whether you kill a baby when it is still in its mother's womb, or after it is born,” he said. He also attacked caesarean section deliveries, which, he claimed, limited population growth because women are advised not to have more than two children with this method (BBC, 01.06.2012). The emphasis on motherhood was put into practice on January 8, 2015, when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced the “Action Plan for Protecting Family and Dynamic Population Program”. In line with President Erdoğan’s long-term policy of encouraging at least three children per family, the government is promising 300 Turkish Liras for a couple's first child, 400 liras for the second, and 600 liras for the third. Davutoğlu explained the incentives for women by saying that “Mothers [working in public office] will be able to continue to be promoted in their positions even in their unpaid leave after birth. We will also make arrangements for part-time work for mothers. After the end of maternity leave, mothers with one child will have the right to work part-time for two months, mothers with two children for four months, and mothers with three or more children for six months. They will receive full wages while working part-time.” He added that the “protection of our family life under any circumstance is of great importance for the protection of future generations, fundamental norms, our values and moral standards,” and the government’s program aimed to bring about new measures to help working mothers. He went on saying that motherhood and continuing a professional career are not categorically opposite things, and mothers who want to continue to take care of their children until primary school will have the right to work up to 30 hours a week so that they do not become detached from their professional life. The government also expanded parental leave to five days so that fathers can support their wives after birth (Hurriyet Daily News, 08.01.2015). Although these are facts that women's organizations have been voicing for years, the logic behind the new plan is not compatible with ideas of gender equality and empowerment of women. Instead, it emphasizes that women
- 148. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 134 need to give birth to contribute to population growth, and they need to stay at home more to take care of children because of culture and traditions. This is the exact opposite of the actions required to be taken by CEDAW and Istanbul Convention. It is clearly emphasized in this new plan that child care is the main duty of women and this is necessary for the healthy upbringing of new generations. What the government finds as a solution for balancing ‘womanly social roles’ is part-time work for women, instead of indulging in a policy of opening kindergartens or providing day-care facilities so that women can have time for housework and take care of the young and elderly at home. A women-friendly alternative would be amending the Labour Law, which forces workplaces with more than 150 female employees to open kindergartens. The Law could be amended by reducing the number, which would help raising the number of kindergartens, or delete the word ‘female’, since emphasizing the gender of employees might be resulting in an unseen discrimination in recruiting women (not to mention that it is discriminatory in the sense that it is the responsibility of the mother, not the father to take care of children). Furthermore, by encouraging women to more flexible types of work, the risk of women to be employed in low paid jobs with minimum or no benefits arises, and women’s dismissal from the workforce finds comfortable grounds in reference to significance of the family. These policies will contribute to inequalities between women and men such as occupational and sectoral gender segregation, gender pay gap, the glass ceiling, and encourage discrimination against women in the labour market. It was mentioned earlier that the new Civil Law increased the age of marriage to seventeen. However, considering the fact that every human being is considered a child up to the age of eighteen under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that CEDAW recommends eighteen as the minimum age of marriage, it becomes clear that this situation contradicts with the international treaties Turkey signed and that these are child marriages thereunder. The Constitutional Court’s previously mentioned decision on the possibility to get religiously married without obtaining a civil marriage may further exacerbate the problem of child-marriages. Although the civil society organizations (i.a. Uçan Süpürge, Mor Çatı, Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği) were effective in documenting the problems associated with child marriage such as violence, rape and maternal health problems, and they pointed out to the necessity of girl’s education, in 2012, with a new regulation in the education system, the 8 year compulsory education was increased to 12 years but divided into three 4 year period. This means that, a student can leave school after 4 years of the first period or second, can marry, and return to school later. This is a problematic approach given the high instance of child marriages in Turkey. The brides are taken out of school to become a labour force for their husband's family, deprived of education and the opportunity to work or acquire skills. Those who have been married by a religious ceremony alone are particularly vulnerable, because they can't access social services and have no right to property accumulated during marriage without a legal marriage certificate. 4. Conclusion In seeking to assess the reflections of AKP’s neoliberalism and neoconservatism on violence against women, this paper found out that the AKP government is in a constant attempt to design and regulate the private sphere. Whereas women are defined as mothers and motherhood is dignified, the main role of women is limited to child bearing and providing for a healthy society. Hence, gender-based problems are addressed with reference to culture, tradition and religion, instead of adopting a rights-based approach. Although Turkey is a party to many international documents such as CEDAW and Istanbul Convention, and although Turkish Constitution Article 90 asserts that these documents bear the force of law, the discourse of the AKP governments does not refer to violence against women within the scope of
- 149. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 135 international law. Rather, the previously mentioned statements indicate that the method of combatting violence is religion, by claiming that faithful men do not beat their views and women are sacred because they are mothers. Therefore, in AKP’s discourse, violence against women is a private issue, not a societal one, that will be eroded with being more faithful and respecting women who bear children. Private life is not that private, too. Although the AKP governments are neoliberal in the sense that they respect individual rights and freedoms, the reproductive rights of women obviously do not fall under this scope. Although respect for private and family life is a fundamental human right, the AKP governments do not hesitate to tell families the number of children they shall have, to interfere with women’s bodies on whether to give birth or not, and the choice of birth-giving methods. In addition, sexual intercourse is only possible if it is within the family (as discussions on criminalization of adultery indicate). In 2013, the Prime Minister Erdoğan said that it is against his post and values that male and female university students stay together at mixed-gender dormitories or student houses, because many things could happen in those houses. He said that no one shall interpret this as an intervention to private life and added that “we [AKP] are a conservative democratic party” (Milliyet, 05.11.2013). In addition to reflecting the conservative point of view of the government, a more important indication of this neoconservative-neoliberal mentality is that, violence against women is regarded only as physical violence. Sexual, psychological or economic violence is not pointed out. Indeed, the latest plan of the government, by encouraging women towards flexible work may lead the way to gradual retreat of women from the labour force, hence, exposing women to economic violence. In a patriarchal society such as Turkey, where honour crimes and child marriages are significantly high, the pressure on women to give birth in increasing numbers might result in sexual and psychological violence. Although the author of this article acknowledges that women’s unequal participation in the workforce and in politics would amount to violence and result in increasing levels of violence against women, due to its narrow scope, this article has left out examples of discrimination in economic life and politics. However, the author is in the opinion that, the AKP’s recurrent governments created a neoconservative and neoliberal patriarchy that is insensitive to women’s human rights.
- 150. Ayşegül Gökalp Kutlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 136 References Acar, F., & Altunok, G. (2012). Understanding gender equality demands in Turkey: Foundations and boundaries of women's movement. In Saniye Dedeoğlu, & Adem Yavuz Elveren (Eds.), Gender and Society in Turkey: The impact of Neo-Liberal Policies, Political Islam and EU accession (pp. 31–47). (1st edition). London; New York: I.B. Tauris. Acar F. and Altunok, G. (2013). The Politics of intimate at the intersection of neo-liberalism and neo- conservatism in contemporary Turkey. Women’s Studies International Forum, 41, 14-23 Aslan-Akman, C. and Tütüncü, F. (2013). The Struggle Against Male Violence with an Egalitarian Jurisprudence and Religious Conservative Government: The Case of Secular Turkey. In Z.S.Salhi (Ed.) Gender and Violence in Islamic Societies: Patriarchy, Islamism and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa. (pp.82-107). I.B.Taruis, London Ayata A. and Tütüncü F.(2008). Party Politics of the AKP and the Predicaments of Women at the Intersection of the Westernist, Islamist and Feminist Discourses in Turkey. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 35, 363-384 Buğra, Ayşe (2012). The changing welfare regime of Turkey: Neoliberalism, cultural conservatism and social solidarity redefined. In Saniye Dedeoğlu, & Adem Yavuz Elveren (Eds.), Gender and society in Turkey: The impact of neo-liberal policies, political Islam and EU accession (pp. 15–31). (1st edition). London; New York: I.B. Tauris. Charlesworth, H. (1995). Human Rights as Men’s Rights. In J. Peters and A. Wolper (Ed.) Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives. (pp. 103-113). Routledge, New York, ss. 103-113 Çitak, Z., & Tür, Ö. (2008). Women between tradition and change: The justice and development party experience in Turkey. Middle Eastern Studies, 44(3), 455–469. Göle, N. (1995). Authoritarian Secularism and Islamist Politics: The Case of Turkey. In A.R.Norton (Ed.), Civil Society in the Middle East (pp. 17-43) Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill İlkkaracan 2008 İlkkaracan, P. (2008). How adultery almost derailed turkey's aspiration to join the European Union. In Pınar İlkkaracan (Ed.), Deconstructing sexuality in the Middle East (pp. 41–65). Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company Yazıcı, B. (2012). The return to the family: Welfare, state, and politics of the family in Turkey. Anthropological Quarterly, 85(1), 103–140. Yeğenoğlu M. and Coşar S. (2012). The AKP and the Gender Issue: Shuttling between Neoliberalism and Patriarchy. In S. Coşar and G. Yücesan-Özdemir (Eds.) Silent Violence: Neoliberalism, Islamist Politics and the AKP Years in Turkey. (pp. 179-209). Ottawa, Red Quill Books
- 151. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 137 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies The Long Journey of Women Into Politics: Will It Ever Be Possible to Reverse the Bad Fortune? Bahar Tanera* , Esra Arslanb , Nilay Hoşafc abc Mersin University, Women’s Research Center, Turkey Abstract Women have been systematically kept out of politics throughout the ages due to the patriarchal system and gender inequality exacerbated by various factors such as religion, industrialization, globalization and neoliberal policies in the world. However, there are examples of good woman representation in Scandinavian countries and Cuba; countries with different governing ideologies and different economic systems. In Turkey, although women gained electoral rights as early as 1934, much earlier than most countries, they shared the same experience with women in many other countries by being deliberately kept out of politics. However, the recent election opens new windows in politics for women with its highest woman representation (nearly18%) in Turkey’s history. It may be stated that the journey to reach equal representation in the parliament will be a long one, despite its rewards in terms of gender equality. The objective of the study is to analyze the experience of a selected group of countries that constitute good and bad examples of woman representation in politics and to propose a model for Turkey. The study is based upon an extensive literature survey. The countries analyzed in terms of their approach to woman representation in politics are Sweden, Cuba and Iran. Proposals to increase woman representation in Turkey’s political system are presented. ©2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Gender inequality; politics; woman representation; Turkey * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-532-645-3966 ; fax: +90-324-2218545 E-mail address: bahartaner@mersin.edu.tr
- 152. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 138 1. Introduction Women in general have been left behind men in all areas of life except poverty. The governing ideology, cultural codes and the accompanying gender inequality in a nation can lay the ground for women to suffer from all kinds of discrimination. Some examples are owning less property, less educational opportunity, staying more in the private sphere, undertaking major responsibility for the reproductive work at home, being much more subject to violence, earning lower wages in the job market and much less participation in politics. Politics is an arena through which the path to the well-being of a nation passes and decisions concerning the welfare of a nation are taken, including the status of women. Equal representation of women in politics is becoming more important considering the inadequate investment in this resource in many countries. In a period of universal struggle with vital problems such as increasing natural disasters, diminishing resources, poverty, turbulence, political instability and terrorism in various regions, this resource must definitely be benefited from. Business life is full of cases that women outperform men. There are successful women leaders in politics as well: Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton. Successful women leaders possess distinctive abilities like empathy, compassion and persuasion that carry them to upper levels. In countries where the number of women working at upper levels, better paying positions is high women representation in politics is also high. Socioeconomic, cultural and political factors affect women’s representation in politics. Democracy affects women’s electoral status. In order to promote political representation, many contemporary democracies inject in their policies the combination of policies affirming both women’s sameness with men (individualism) and women’s maternal group difference with men (maternalism), the latter involving welfare provision, gender quotas and hereditary monarchies (McDonagh, 2010: 21-24). According to social theorists like Engels, the way towards emancipation of women is through women being enabled to take part in production on a large, social scale; this can be possible only when domestic duties require women’s attention only to a minor degree (Ross, 2001: 76). As stated by sociologists such as Chafetz, earning wage in the labor market increases the status of women and influences women’s effectiveness in acquiring power in other fields, including politics (Iversen and Rosenbluth, 2008: 481). The reason for fewer women working outside home and fewer holding positions in government in the Middle East than in any other region of the world is Islamic traditions (Ross, 2008:107). Generally, women are actively involved in politics in countries where gender equality is established. According to 2014 GGG Index1 , Scandinavian countries rank higher in gender equality, whereas Turkey is placed 125th among 141 countries. IPU2 ranking which indicates the parliamentary performance of countries show a similar trend. The 7th Meeting of Women Speakers of Parliament held in New Delhi, India on 3-4 October 2012, focused on increasing gender sensitivity of parliaments. Main commitment areas were promotion of women’s representation in parliaments and other elected bodies, placement of gender equality on the parliamentary agenda and sharing gender equality with men (IPU, 2015). In Turkey although women gained electoral rights in 1934, far earlier than many European countries, the present political system is far from offering women equal status as men. Although women got more chairs in the parliament in 2015 elections (17,8 %), this is way behind other countries. The aim of this study is to investigate the status of women in politics in Sweden, Cuba and Iran. Proposals for Turkey that might increase the representation of women in politics and improve gender equality in general are developed. 1 Global Gender Gap Report is prepared by the World Economic Forum. It indicates the gender equality rankings of different countries on the basis of health, education, economy and politics. 2 IPU which is an organization for Parliaments works in close cooperation with the UN. Among the areas of work is the defence and promotion of human rights which are essential for parliamentary democracy and development.
- 153. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 139 2. Women’s Representation in Politics Since ancient Greece religion, military and politics have remained as male domain. Of these, politics has been the hardest for women to enter. Although liberty, equality and human rights were introduced by the French Revolution women had to wait almost one and a half century for their political rights. After World War I, accompanied by the first wave feminism, women could vote in a lot of countries. However, voting right was not sufficient for perfect equality since the electoral rates of women remained very low (Duby and Perrot, 1992: 19). All countries do not practice similar policies in gender mainstreaming. Patriarchy, gender-based segregation of the labor market, masculine party structures placing women in dummy representations, nature of the electoral system, all block women representation in politics. Although women advanced their political growth, substantial country-level variation exists in patterns of expansion and change (Paxton et al, 2010: 3). Women face difficulties such as the electoral system structure, governing party ideology, timing of women's suffrage, share of women in professional occupations and cultural attitudes toward the role of women in politics (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999: 234). The rate of women in legislative bodies around the world has risen over the past decades, but women’s representation in parliaments is still inadequate (IPU, 2013). Proportional representation, electoral system, the cultural standing of women and the country’s level of development all can have positive effects on women’s representation in politics. Degree of urbanization, women’s labor force participation and the dominant political ideology can also affect women’s political representation (Sundström and Stockemer, 2015: 14). In summary, political, socioeconomic and cultural factors are all effective in the unequal representation of women. Political factors play a central role in determining the degree of gender inequality in political representation. Caul (2010: 94) identifies these as high levels of institutionalization, a localized level of candidate nomination, leftist and post materialist values, high levels of women working at internal party offices, quota rules that facilitate women’s representation and the presence of formal rules to increase the number of women in politics. Bari (2005: 4) classifies these as the nature of politics, male domination of politics, parties and culture of formal political structure, level of democratization. Halder (2004: 29) denotes that women`s representation depends on the nature of the regime, political culture, electoral systems, quotas and structural factors like culture, religion accompanied by socioeconomic conditions such as education and employment. Paxton and Kunowich (2003: 89-92) identify the factors as structural, ideological and political. Kenworthy and Malami (1999: 237-239) express these factors as the structure of the electoral system, level of democratization of countries, the timing of women’s suffrage and Marxist Leninist ideology. Marxist Leninist regimes use positive action strategies to ensure high levels of women representation (Paxton, et al, 2006: 904). Party ideology has an influence on the adoption of formal rules concerning women representation. Voluntary candidate quotas are most common in the left wing parties that contain social democratic, labour, communist, socialist and green parties (Dahlerup and Frieden, 2008: 17). According to Caul (2010: 95) particularly new left parties are most likely to welcome activists who are underrepresented in the parliament. In this way, parties that are already receptive to claims for equal representation may be given more support. The conventional relationship between leftist parties and the women's movement on women's issues extends to women's representation in parliament. Rule states that right-wing parties are more conservative and have traditional values that discourage women’s participation (1987: 491). Leftist parties are expected to have greater commitment to reduce gender inequality and are more likely to nominate women as candidates (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999: 258). Thus, when the number of leftist party chairs increase, number of women parliament members is expected to increase. Marxist Leninist governments are relatively few, but those which exist encourage women's legislative representation. Usal (2010:133) claims that left-wing party policies practising gender quota encourage right-wing parties to do the same, to avoid falling behind the other one. Sundström and Stockemer (2015: 12) also agree with the high level of women’s representation in left-wing parties.
- 154. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 140 Other factors affecting women’s representation are proportional representation and level of democratization. High early levels of democracy affect the growth of women’s representation over time; thus high early levels of democracy, political rights and civil liberties create a climate under which women can act to gain representation (Paxton, et al, 2010: 5-30; Norris and Inglehart, 2001:130). A nation's electoral system strongly affects women's representation (Caul, 2010: 84). The type of the electoral system can have a great effect on women’s chances of election. Proportional representation has an affirmative effect on political participation of women, both in parliament and local representations. Although electoral systems by themselves do not determine the level of women representation, they are important since they can be and are regularly changed (Ballington and Matland, 2004: 3). Kenthworty and Malami (1999: 256) find strong support for the effect of the electoral system structure. Party list/multimember district systems are more convenient for the election of women to national legislatures than are candidate-centered/single-member district systems. From a global perspective, electoral systems accompanied by quotas explain much of the difference in women’s representation in legislatures (Tripp and Kang, 2008: 355). Paxton and Kunovich (2003: 103) state that electoral systems have important influences on women’s levels of representation and proportional representation systems are more effective than other electoral systems for getting women into politics. Another factor is the entitlement to vote. According to Kenworthy and Malami (1999: 256), the timing of women's suffrage does not seem to have a positive influence on women's political representation. By the mid-1990's, 96% of women in the world have gained the right to vote. To set a relationship between these variables, if the right to vote has been gained so early, why is the women representation in politics so low? Moore and Schackman found out no proof that women’s gaining the voting right earlier has a positive influence on their representation (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999: 239).Turkey is a striking example in this context. Although the right to vote was gained as early as 1934, Turkey has a bad report in gender mainstreaming and low women representation in the parliament. Gender Quota in electoral system is one of the effective special measures as a way to facilitate women’s representation. Recently, there has been an increase in the implementation of electoral gender quotas. Equal opportunity does not arise as a result of abolishing formal barriers only; there are all sorts of discrimination and hidden barriers that prevent women from acquiring a fair share of political power. Compensatory measures must be taken to attain equality when structural barriers exist. So, strategies such as quota must not be considered as a discriminatory act against men, but as a compensation for structural barriers hindering women in the electoral process (Freidenvall, 2003: 2-9). Gender quotas offer the most concrete power for women’s representation and with the proportional representation system these institutional factors are of great importance. They are an important mechanism for women to enter public offices worldwide besides being helpful in overcoming problems resulting from economic underdevelopment, authoritarianism, cultural influences and even the electoral system (Tripp and Kang, 2008: 339, 359). The level of party competition is another factor which may affect women’s opportunities for nomination (Norris and Inglehart, 2001: 130). If one party nominates many women and places them high on the party list, competitors feel obliged to do the same (Tripp and Kang, 2008: 344). Socioeconomic Factors Kenworthy and Malami classify these factors as labor force activity, economic development, the size and strength of the women’s movement and educational attainment. They emphasize that the higher the rates of female labor force participation, the larger the number of motivated and well-connected female candidates willing to stand for office and higher rates of female voting (1999: 240). But there is no clear connection between the socioeconomic factors and women’s political participation excluding the women’s share in professional occupations (1999:257). Considerable amount of development increases the number of women who are likely to have formal positions and experience, such as labour unions or professional organizations (Shvedova, 2005: 40). However, the extraction of oil and gas may reduce the role of women in the work force and the possibility of them having political influence as in the case of
- 155. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 141 mineral rich states like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria. When women`s participation in the economic and political life of a country becomes so limited, patriarchy will have the absolute power (Ross, 2008:120). Tripp and Kang (2008: 355-357) show that there is no concrete relation between women`s work force participation and representation except in sound democracies. Quotas are more important than the role of economic measures, examples being poor countries with the highest levels of women representation such as Mozambique, Burundi and Tanzania. Gender quotas and electoral system should be used as safety valves for equal representation of women in legislative bodies, making institutional actions even more important than proportional election system and quotas. Kenworthy and Malami (1999: 260) also emphasize that although it is not necessarily an easier route to gender political equality, changing political institutions and cultural beliefs and practices might be more effective. Regarding cultural factors, it has long been supposed that traditional anti-egalitarian attitudes against gender slow down the political progress of women. Norris and Inglehart claim that countries having more egalitarian culture have more women in power (2001:131, 134). Siaroff (2000: 209) also states that more egalitarian societies, particularly those which adopted early female political rights, leftist values and traditions as expressed through socialist welfare systems have more women in parliament than other systems. Women may still achieve more political representation in nations where attitudes toward the role of women in politics are liberal without considering factors such as women’s socioeconomic progress and the structure of the political system. The determinants such as religion, ratification of U.N. convention and abortion rights are effective on women’s representation (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999: 241). Shvedova (2005: 44) designates cultural factors as “ideological” barriers including traditional roles, lack of confidence, the perception of politics as “dirty game” and the role of mass media. According to Paxton and Kunovich’s study of women in 46 legislatures (2003:103-104), a country that has an egalitarian ideological orientation attaches importance to women representation. Bari (2005: 4) claims that secular democracies and some developing countries have provided more opportunities for women`s participation in politics than countries where religious orthodoxy shape politics and democracy. According to Norris and Inglehart (2001: 67), countries that have predominantly Muslim populations and higher rates of religiosity generally tend to have lower rates of support for gender equality than more secular countries and countries with other predominant religions. Cultural factors which affect women’s representation such as ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the presence of a woman's movement and the presence of abortion rights are the variables seen mainly insignificant(Paxton and Kunovich, 2003: 92). Although Kenworthy and Malami (1999:257) found a positive relationship between women’s legislative participation and CEDAW, political implementations may differ from the written agreements. For example Saudi Arabia’s ratification of (CEDAW) hides its negative approach to women suffrage (Paxton et al, 2006:899). 3. Lessons from Sweden, Cuba and Iran In this study, political representation of women in Sweden, Cuba and Iran are analysed to formulate proposals directed at increasing women’s political representation in Turkey. The selection was made on the basis of the ranking of these countries in IPU Index. In this Index, Cuba and Sweden have ranked 3rd and 5th , respectively; whereas Iran is among the lowest ranking countries (137th ). All these countries are economically developed. Turkey’s rank in the Index is 90th . Sweden’s high ranking was realized through social policies aimed at gender equality, quota arrangements, gender equality commissions in the parliament and proportional representation measures. Sweden is quite sensitive in the application of social policies. It is among the countries that inject gender mainstreaming in the policies and has a social welfare system that supports the work life and family life of both genders. Active political participation of women is achieved through women friendly arrangements as a government policy. In other words, as women participate more and more in the public sphere, gender inequality in politics decreases (Weforum, 2014). Quota for equal representation of women in politics was first discussed in 1928 by Sweden. All political parties have adopted measures to increase the
- 156. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 142 number of women in elected bodies at all levels of government, ranging from non-mandatory general goals to voluntary party quotas (Palmieri, 2011: 81). Sweden Parliament has an Equal Opportunity Commission Ombudsman that has the responsibility of monitoring discriminatory applications against genders, trans identities, ethnicity, religion and other identities. There is also a Ministry of Children, Senior Citizens and Gender Equality. Among the responsibilities of the ministry are children’s rights, social services, rights of handicapped and gender equality (Government of Sweden, 2015). 12 out of 23 ministries are administered by women. Every ministry in Sweden carries responsibility for gender equality. In Scandinavian countries the proportional representation system is used in the elections and women are represented in the parliament at a high level (IPU, 2015a). One significant campaign to achieve gender equality in the Swedish parliament is HeForShe campaign undertaken by the government on March 6, 2014. During a special event for the campaign, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson stated that HeForShe is about freedom. She said that we can all enjoy greater freedom when we start defining ourselves by what we are, instead of by what we are not. Watson also emphasized that men are also imprisoned by gender stereotypes; when they are free, things will naturally change for women (Watson, 2014). The meaning of HeForShe is “No way to end gender inequality unless there is men’s support.” This is a campaign of UN Women Unit that invites men to take responsibility for gender equality war. It is stated that Sweden’s new government is a feminist one and both men and women should have equal place in structuring the society and life. Thus, gender equality undertaken as a government policy under the guidance of the prime minister and the male members of the assembly is very important for enabling women to participate in the public sphere and politics (Government of Sweden, 2015). Cuban Revolution (1959) contributed significantly to the status of women in the society. In Castro’s words, this was “a revolution in revolution” (Torrerosa, 2012). Presently, Cuban girls acquired primary education by 99%, baby death rates are the lowest in the American continent by 4,5%, gender equality is encouraged and women are as empowered as men, employment rate for women being 47%, unemployment rate for women being 2%, women employment in managerial positions in all sectors being 33,1%, women officers in the Cuban army being 22% (Center for Democracy in America, 2013: 34-67). Also, 431,3% of all court judges and 74 % of attorneys are women. 2013 elections resulted in 299 women ministers entering the parliament out of 612 (48.9%) (IPU 2015 b). World average of women representation in the parliament being less than 20%, this is more than twice the world average (RATB, 2015). In the world rankings of women’s representation in the parliament, Cuba is the 3rd (IPU 2015 a) and in gender equality 30th (Weforum, 2014:160). Islam religion seems to limit the equality and freedom of women. The situation in Iran indicates that women, who worked very hard for the foundation of the Islamic Republic, have been deprived of all their previously acquired rights. According to Najmabadi, this was a radical transformation that evaluates all women issues from a moral standpoint which fell apart from the previous modernist approach towards women (Kandiyoti, 2011:8). According to Ahmad-i Nia, women’s lives in Iran are dictated by the ideologies of the men in their lives; either their fathers, their husbands or other men determine all vital issues such as education, active status in the society and the like (Shojaei et all, 2010: 264). According to the 2014 GGG Report Data (Table 1), Iran ranks 137th among 142 countries in gender mainstreaming. Labor force participation rate is 17% and rate of professional and technical workers is 35%, rate of women legislators, senior officials and managers is 15%, women rate in ministerial positions is 10%. Similarly, Iran is 104th in women's access to education, 139th in economic participation and opportunity and 135th in political empowerment (Weforum, 2014: 210- 211). 4. Turkey Women enjoyed freedom to express themselves and to get organized in the 2nd Constitutional Monarchy period (1908), but they started losing these acquisitions in the early years of the Republic. In 1923, Kadınlar Halk Fırkası (Women’s Public Party) was founded by Nezihe Muhittin but it was not approved on the basis of potential fragmentation of the community on a gender basis (Toprak, 1994:8). In 1924, Türk Kadınlar Birliği (Turkish Women Union) was established
- 157. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 143 again under the leadership of Nezihe Muhittin. Their main demand was social and political rights for women. However, they were channelized to social activities, rather than political ones (Sancar, 2004: 12). Later in 1935, after women gained suffrage, Turkish Women Union abolished itself since their mission was accomplished (Konan, 2011:166) and a woman branch of the governing party, Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası (Republican Party) was established to deal with social activities (Kaplan, 1998:159). According to Kandiyoti (2013: 78) reformist governments, while they recognize new rights for women, they abolish the existing independent women organizations and establish new, government supported women organizations, obedient to them. According to the 2014 Global Gender Gap Report Data (Table 2) Turkey ranks 125th among 142 countries in gender mainstreaming. Women's participation in the labor force is 32%, women professional and technical workers is 37%, women legislators, senior officials and managers is 12%, women ministers is 4%. Turkey is 105th in women's access to education, 132th in economic participation and opportunity and 113th in political empowerment (Weforum, 2014: 354-355). Table 1. Country Profiles/Global Gender Gap Report 2014 Country Rank Economic Participation and Opportunity Educational Attainment Political Empowerment SWEDEN CUBA TURKEY IRAN 4. 30. 125. 137. 15. 113. 132. 139. 43. 26. 105. 104. 5. 18. 113. 135. Source: Weforum 2014 By 2015 general election, women representation in the parliament reached 17,6%, 97 of the parliament members being women out of 550. Representation of women at the local government level is not much different; only 3 out of 30 metropolitan municipal administrators and 37 out of 1351 local municipal administrators being woman (KSGM, 2015). These results do not fit with the parliamentarian democracy regime and are far from being satisfactory in terms of gender equality, democracy and women’ political representation. In Turkey, the governing party is a rightist one that does not support gender equality. The previous Prime Minister (Head of the Republic at present) expressed his opinion as: “Men and women are not equal, because they are different in nature.” He also said that “women need to be equivalent, rather than equal”, implying women cannot do all jobs (CNN, 2014). He was criticized fiercely by Women’s Rights groups for trying to abolish rights gained by women decades ago. His words were condemned by some activist groups as violating the national constitution and international agreements. Prime Minister’s remarks are a declaration of the governing philosophy, reflecting the codes of fundamentalism and patriarchy. There are various examples in the world that when fundamentalism and patriarchy go hand in hand, gender equality becomes harder to establish. There is no problem with having a strong faith in Islam. However, this should not be perceived as a denial of modernism. Religion should not lead to segregation among people such as Alawis and Sunnis, conservative women and modern women and much less between women and men. 5. Conclusion and Proposals for Turkey Democracy and women’s suffrage do not provide a definite opportunity for representation in politics, leftist regimes being vivid examples. A country’s level of development also cannot guarantee equality in politics for women. Strict religious ideologies are obstacles to the desired active participation of women in politics. Egalitarian culture in a country could be a boost for women’s representation in politics. On the other hand, institutional applications such as gender quotas in electoral systems have a good potential for women to enter public offices. Quotas also help in solving problems such as underdevelopment, authoritarianism, cultural effects
- 158. Bahar Taner, EsraArslan, Nilay Hoşaf / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 144 and also election systems. Quotas, in this sense would be one compensation measure to fight with structural barriers women have to face in the electoral process. The experience of countries with good women representation in politics indicate that gender equality should be undertaken as a government policy and put into action exactly as stated in the laws. It is extremely important that the President, the Prime Minister and the male members of the assembly internalize women’s equal representation in politics. Campaigns emphasizing equal representation are also important in this endeavour. There are many countries in the world that achieved gender equality, high women employment in quality and quantity in all sectors and good representation in politics at the same time. Sweden and Cuba are among those with a high IPU ranking. Sweden has a very good record in gender equality and a high employment rate for women at high status jobs. Cuba also reveals similar results. There are also various countries (like the Islamic Republic of Iran) that have a poor record; mainly because of the restraining force of religion on women. Following are some proposals for increasing women’s political representation in Turkey: 1. It is vital that gender equality is adopted as the governing philosophy and gender mainstreaming is injected into governmental policies parties’ programs so that women are empowered and can achieve a good representation. Government should support women representation in politics through - structuring a social welfare system directed at supporting the work life and family life, - increasing women participation in the public sphere and decreasing gender inequality in politics, by adopting a women friendly approach as a government policy, - Parliament having an Equal Opportunity Commission Ombudsman, watching all kinds of discriminatory action, - establishing a Ministry of Children, Senior Citizens and Gender Equality, keeping all ministries responsible for gender equality in their own areas of responsibility, - organizing campaigns like the HeForShe campaign of UN, inviting all men in the parliament to take responsibility for gender equality. - increasing the representation of women in the parliament through voluntary quotas, zipper system and proportional election system. 2. As required by EU directives, the government should increase the employment rate of women. Also, women employment in managerial positions in all sectors should be increased. As an example, women employment in the legal sector; judges and attorneys (in Cuba, these are 43 % and 74 % respectively). Government should also assign more women to ministerial positions (Cuba has almost 50 %). 3. Since it may limit the equality and freedom of women as in Iran, religion should not be permitted to block the way to gender equality and empowerment of women. Secularism should be the umbrella under which gender equality, women’s empowerment and political representation can flourish. References Ballington, J., Matland, R. E. (2004, January). Political parties and special measures: Enhancing women’s participation in electoral processes. In United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI). Bari, F. (2005, November). Women’s political participation: Issues and Challenges. In United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Expert Group Meeting: Enhancing Participation of Women in Development through an Enabling Environment for Achieving Gender Equality, Bangkok. CNN News (2014).Women`s groups slam Turkey’s Erdogan for sexist remarks, Nov. 25 (Access date 25.07.2015).http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/25/world/europe/turkey-erdogan-women/
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- 161. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 147 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Women’s Knowledge in “Natural” Food Production Bermal Küçük* Boğaziçi University, Department of Sociology, Turkey Abstract There is a significant growing demand for healthy and natural food particularly among some fractions of the middle and upper classes in metropolitan areas over the last decade in Turkey. This trend also has some repercussions in the world of agriculture. We observe that an increasing number of firms have been established to meet this demand through organizing and coordinating the agricultural production especially in the southwestern cities of Turkey. There are three features that characterize these firms: Firstly, all of these firms claim that they are engaged in alternative’ natural mode of food production which is reconciled with nature and involves the use of native seeds. Secondly, they position themselves against food production with organic certification, which is considered to be the part of global organic food chain. Thirdly, their employees are mostly women. The central question that triggers my research is: if the owners of the firms do not certify their products, how could they convince their customers that their products are natural, healthy and hygienic? At this point, the discourse of trust emerges as a way of giving confidence to their customers. In this paper I argue that it is the women’s “traditional” knowledge about domestic food production and nutrition accumulated over ages which provides the very basis for boosting the discourse of trust and thus sustaining this form of food production. In this sector knowledge of women appears as a natural resource available to use of capital and is appropriated. It, thus, turns into economic resource and constitutes the hidden abode of accumulation of capital. This paper is based on a field research that I have carried out in four villages in Nazilli last September and April. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Agricultural production; natural food; discourse of trust; knowledge of women; accumulation of capital; * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +090-506-937-76-14. E-mail address: bermal1986@gmail.com
- 162. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 148 1. Introduction There is a significant growing demand for healthy and natural food particularly among some fractions of the middle and upper classes in metropolitan areas over the last decade in Turkey. These people reflect growing concern over health benefit as a response to harmful effects of industrialized agriculture. They demand food perceived to be “natural,” “traditional” and “local” and want to experience the “natural world” by consuming these kinds of food. The desire for consumption of such food can be considered as a link to a quest for authenticity (Sims, 2009). This quest has some repercussions in the world of agriculture. We observe that an increasing number of firms have been established to meet this demand through organizing and coordinating agricultural production especially in the southwestern cities of Turkey. İpek Hanım Farm, Gündönümü Farm, Hasan Bey Farm are only some of them. There are three important features that characterize these firms: Firstly, all of these firms claim that they are engaged in an alternative mode of food production which is reconciled with nature and involves the use of native seeds. The way of production they engage in is defined as “natural food production”. Secondly, they position themselves against certificated organic food production which is considered to be the part of a global organic food chain. Thirdly, their employees are mostly women. The central questions that trigger my research are: How is “alternative” as a term, conceptualized? What kind of discourses and practices exist around the concept of alternative? How are these discourses and practices related to the labour and production processes? What kind of exploitation systems and power relations are hidden behind the desire for an authentic life and narratives around the concept of “alternative food production”? What are the means of adding value to commodities produced in this sector? What generates the particular qualities of these kinds of food? It seems to me that the discourses exist around natural food and the means of adding value are the fundamental elements of understanding production and the labour process in the sector of natural food production. In this paper I will try to examine these labor and production processes which lie behind and are obscured by various discourses and narratives. 2. Feminist approaches on women’s domestic labour In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, many feminists, not only demanded control over their bodies and equality in social and political life, but also put forward a new aspect in the definition of capitalism to examine the material base of their oppression. The production of surplus value as a basic condition of capitalist economy cannot be isolated from domestic labour women perform in the household. There is no individual labourer isolated from women’s additional labour that secures the maintenance of workingmen. They claim that there is a larger amount of labour than appears in the factory. There is always women’s hidden labour within the wage that the working man receives as a compensation for his labour. This is what makes exploitation more effective since capital transforms an enormous quantity of social services into privatized activity putting it on the backs of women in the household. This is what makes the male wage labourer more productive. Wage-labour can only be productive as long as it can extract and exploit women’s non-wage labour which produces life or subsistence (Federici 2004; Mies 1998; Della Costa 1972 ). That is to say, women’s domestic non-waged labour is subsumed under commodity production and capital accumulation. Feminists, therefore, have explained that women’s labour constitutes an intrinsic part of the capitalist economy. This is a new form of understanding the process of capital accumulation that is ignored in Marx’s labour theory of value. This new understanding of capitalism begins with the critique of Marx’s approach concerning the question of the productivity of labourer. Marx, in Capital, says that “only that labourer is productive who
- 163. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 149 produces surplus for the realization of capital” (Capital, vol. 1, 1974). This concept of productive labour, for me, is kind of an abstraction which makes women’s labour invisible. This abstraction leads to a misunderstanding based on the assumption that wage labour is productive in a self-constituted way. However, as Dalla Costa puts it, the productivity of the male wage labourer depends on women’s services provided in the household. In other words, the creation and maintenance of labour carried out by women in the household is the very precondition of the productivity of the workingman. Through the creation and maintenance of wage labour, women contribute to the realization of surplus value. The nuclear family, thus, is a kind of “social factory” and women are the labourers in it, according to her view. Just like Della Costa, Maria Mies also rejects the narrow definition of the concept of productive labour in the Marxist theory. She says that “labour can only be productive in the sense of producing surplus value as long as it can tap, extract, exploit and appropriate which is sent in the production of life or subsistence production which is largely non-wage (Mies 1998:47). For her, the production of life, or subsistence production which is performed through the non-wage labour of women, constitutes the basis upon which “capitalist productive labour” can be built up and exploited (Mies 1998:48). For these feminist theoreticians, the reason that women’s domestic labour become invisible and worthless and that it is excluded from the concept of “work” is rooted in the rise of capitalism. In her essay “Women and the Subversion of Community”, Della Costa analyses how capitalism has created the modern family and women have been locked up in it (Della Costa, 1972). Like many other authors, she says that in the previous community-feudalism- family was the place of production as it was also the living space. The living space and the place of production were not separated from each other. It was in the household where men and women toiled together on agricultural and artisan production. By destroying this type of community, capitalism has created isolated spheres: the factory and the household. While the factory has become the new productive centre in which men turned into wage labourers, the household has remained the place of reproduction for which only women are responsible. Confining women to the house and making her the servant of the male work-force, this historic change has redefined women’s position in the society: Women as a housewife. This is a new sexual division of labour under the new patriarchal order. Once this historical change and the concomitant patriarchal order confines women into the house, women’s existence in general and her knowledge in particular have been disqualified, devaluated and located low down on the hierarchy. In other words, confining women to the house is one of those mechanisms by which both labour and knowledge of women become worthless and thus turn into a “colony and a source for unregulated exploitation” (Mies, 1998: 33). In her excellent work, Caliban and the Witch, Federici shows how “witch- hunts served the purpose of destroying women’s knowledge over their life and turned into a source of enrichment (Federici, 2004). Women had collective knowledge as midwives and healers whose traditional roles corresponded to what we would now classify as medicine, gynecology and psychotherapy. In the period of capitalist ascendance, it was realized that all those women’s independent knowledge over their body and life provided them with considerable power. Capitalism, therefore, at the very beginning, required the destruction of all those women’s autonomous control over various types of useful knowledge, that is, the extermination of the “witches”. Women who had control over their bodies, their labour, and their sexual and reproductive power were subjected to the authority of husbands, states and employers. In sum, with the rise of capitalism, patriarchal regime took a new form under which not only women’s labour but also her knowledge was revalued. Now, I will try to get into detail how knowledge has been reconceptualised within this new power regime.
- 164. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 150 3. Women’s knowledge in the sector of natural food production Foucault talks about how this new power regime created its own social, historical and institutional relations through which only particular form of knowledge formation has been developed, represented and legitimatized (Foucault 1980). For him, this is the institutional “regime of truth” that shapes and filters the hierarchies of knowledge practices and imposes the new orders in the name of some “true knowledge”. In this context, there is no room for the knowledge which are scientifically disqualified and below the required level of instrumentally rational logic. Foucault defines this knowledge as “subjugated knowledge”. Subjugated knowledge is hierarchically inferior in this new order and thus cannot be deemed truth in that of the Western epistemology and Universalist assumptions. They have been often seen as “a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges located low down on the hierarchy beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity” (Foucault 1980: 82). They are non-scientific knowledges which are “referred to as folk theories, myths or superstitions and have been interpreted as subjective, unreliable and as a place time and specific” (Tsouvalis 2000: 911, quoted in Morris, 2006:2). Traditional, indigenous, local knowledge is only some of those knowledges. In their work Temporal and Special Dimension of Knowledge: Implication for Sustainable Agriculture, Raedeke and Rikon say that “term such as local, indigenous, or traditional knowledge have different connotations; however, they all Indicate types of knowledge that culminate through the experience of social groups embedded in specific localities and cultural contexts” (Raedeke and Rikon 1996: 2). The litterateur I have mentioned above does not take the women’s knowledge into account. What I try to argue, as many other feminist theoreticians, is that not only traditional, local, indigenous knowledge but also women’s knowledge is one of this law-rank knowledge that has been ignored, devalued and discounted in the modern Western epistemology. Women’s distinctive historical experiences make possible different ways of thinking about the world they live in. These different ways of thinking lead them to constitute different forms of knowledge which are excluded from the hegemonic Western epistemology. Women’s knowledge is considered personalistic and to be derived from their sensuous and subjective activities. What feminist scholars have tried to do is the revaluation of such knowledges arising from women’s personalistic, sensuous and subjective experiments which are pushed to the epistemic peripheries. They try to open a door for women “who have no access to the natural world except through their sense” (Klopenburg 1991:9). Kloppenburg states that one of the central themes in the feminist analysis of science is the importance of legitimating and reaffirming the value of producing knowledge through “sensuous activity” and “personal experience” that is necessarily and specifically “local” (and therefore neither universalizing nor essentializing) in character (Klopenburg 1991: 9). It should be noted that these authors do not attempt to equalize women’s knowledge with the hegemonic one or “raise” it to the level of the modern and scientific domain. What they try to do is to move beyond this dualistic perspective. For them there is no such dualism like modern knowledge vs. traditional knowledge, indigenous knowledge vs. scientific knowledge, women’s knowledge vs. rational knowledge. Local, traditional, indigenous and women’s knowledge is always already implicit in the modern Western scientific knowledge. Science has always already grown out of local way of knowing (Braverman 1974). Neither the modern Western epistemology and science nor economy and the accumulation of capital can be isolated from these subjugated knowledges. Departing from the Lee’s work, Henry and Pollard say in their work Capitalism on Knowledge, that the economy is much broader than any particular economic rationale. The economy encompasses the whole range of behaviours driven by the everyday activities of social being (Henry and Pollard 2000). This is an alternative conceptualization of economy. Economy cannot be analyzed as an analytically distinct sphere which is separate from society. Hence, there is no
- 165. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 151 pure, completely rationalized economic model as the mainstream approach would suggest. Economy has always been embedded in both economic and non-economic institutions, experiences and actions (Pollanyi 1957; Granovetter 1985). I would argue that women’s knowledge is one of those constitutive elements that has been deligimated and subsequently obscured in the economy. If it is obscured in economy perhaps it is not completely lost then (Kloppenbenrg, p.20). It manifests itself in various ways in different economic models. Now, I would like to analyze the crucial place of women’s knowledge in the sector of natural food production and try to show how appropriation of women’s knowledge takes place in that sector. 4. Case study: İpek Hanım farm İpek Hanım farm was established in Ocaklı village of Nazilli in 2004. Nazilli is a district of Aydın in the south-west Turkey. It all began with the idea that it would be nice for Pınar Hanım to have a place in the country in the hope to escape the dilemma of industrial agriculture. At first, she produced agricultural products for the maintenance of her life. She also sent some of those products to her close friends and family members as a gift in small packages to share those tastes with them. After her friends suggested her to pay for the products rather than receiving as a gift, Pınar Kaftancıoğlu entered a new path. She established a farm called “İpek Hanım Farm” on a 12 acres of land. This farm consists of several separated compartments in each of which different types of work are carried out. A compartment is divided for the storage of harvested products, another compartment is for the packing of ordered products and the rest of them are used as patisseries, stone oven for baking bread, coop, dairy, kitchen in which both the meal is cooked and the workers have their lunch. There are also two offices in one of which about 6 people work together as manager, secretary and food engineer. The other office is Pınar Hanım’s private office. Apart from the farm which consists of separated production units, there is also a large agricultural land outside the village and a huge barn in which the cattle live. It can be said that the owner of the farm, Pınar Kaftancıoğlu, has turned every piece of this land into a working landscape and a site of production. However, at the beginning, the production capacity of the farm was quite different from its current form. When it was first established in 2004, the total amount of land consisted of 40 acres which was manned by approximately 10 people. Hüsniye Hanım, the manager of the farm, explains the first days of the farm as follows: In the past there were no workers there; Pınar Hanım was packing the products by herself. But there were also two families that were helping her. She first began with these two families. At the beginning she was packing 3-4 packages in a day. She was even gathering packages which were not useful anymore for markets or grocers so they were being thrown out. Then, there is this editor and the owner of the “Portakal Ağacı” and I guess she is also the director of TRT çocuk but I am not sure about it. Well, this woman had an internet blog called “portakal ağacı” and she wrote about İpek Hanım çiftliği in her blog. After this publication and Ayşe Arman’s interview with Pınar Kaftancıoğlu in Hürriyet newspapers, her farm has grown and come to be known. Beside the news and interviews in the newspaper about this farm, she also took the support of first ten people who had a crucial role in establishing this farm and then ensured its continuity. This small group consists of Pınar Hanım and two different families who are also relatives. These two families have been living in that village and engaged in agriculture and husbandry since their ancestors. Farmers with a long family history on their farms know a lot about the overall structure of village and the soil in that region. Taking the knowledge and the support of these peasants and women on her back, Pınar Kaftancıoğlu, has
- 166. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 152 gradually grown the production capacity of the farm. As of today, her farm is established on 400 acres of land. Yet it is not the limit she has reached. Rather she has gradually been extending her land. Pınar Hanım states that “we get another land piece almost every week”. The 400 acres of land is manned by about 150 workers, except from those of seasonal ones. The number of workers is not only limited with the population of the Ocaklı village where farm is established, but has reached out the surrounding villages later on. The workers exclusively consist of women. Pınar Kaftancıoğlu says that “this work inherently involves women”. Women are involved in the food cycle all year around. These activities include clearing the land, harvesting, planting, weeding, storage and cooking. About 600 different kinds of products are produced by the women divided according to their skills and inclinations. All this production carried out by women is based on the knowledge and experience that they have accumulated over the histories. Hüsniye Hanım says that These women are total creators. Why do you think we have gained 7-8 kilos within 2 years? (Laughs) For example, take Melek. She comes every other day with a plate on her hand. ‘I made this, I made that.’ Depends on what we have at hand. Let’s say, it is the apple time or the apricot time. 90% of our posts are to Istanbul, so they must be packaged very carefully. If one of the apricots has a worm hole or a small puncture, then the water of that apricot gets at the others and causes them to go bad. Therefore, we put the products with small punctures or bugs aside. So when we have some apricots or peaches, what do we do? We make jams or marmalades with them. We don’t waste any product. Even the worst ones… We feed our animals with them. All of us, say, our friends, us or Pınar Hanım… We think about what we can do. We use pumpkin, for example, if it is the pumpkin time. Melek made a pumpkin cake the other day, we tasted it and it was wonderful. They come and say ‘Hüsniye Hanım, I saw this, this is beautiful, let’s mix our cheese with this thing and it will be wonderful’. They make and we eat. Pinar Hanım eats and says ‘oh, this is good’, so we add it to the list. There is a non-professional R&D here and actually it is the best. The term R&D is quite ironic here. R&D is a general term for activities that are conducted with the intention of making a discovery that can either lead to the development of new products or procedures or to improvement of existing products or procedures” (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/randd.asp). It is a means by which new types of knowledge is produced or improved for the further growth of a business. The women in this farm come every other day with new ideas and suggestions using their knowledge about domestic food production. Recipes for food production are created by these women. They decide on their own how a particular food should be produced rather than depending on standardized recipes. They produce food in much the same way as their mothers and grandmothers did before them. They have domestic knowledge and cooking skills based on the culinary that they inherited from their mothers, grandmothers and others collective experiences. Gravy, cheese, tarhana, jam, composte, wafer are only some of those products that exist in the list presented to the customers via mail. I would like to call these types of food as “craft products” since both knowledge, skills and experience are required for their production. The valuation of these products based on the women’s traditional way of knowing is not simply rooted in the quality and the taste inherent in them. It seems to me that there are two more significant factors that qualify, add value and “naturalize” the food produced in this farm: trust in the women’s culinary experience based on their knowledge about domestic food production and the long-term, continuous, and unchanging tie of this knowledge with the past. Pınar Kaftancıoğlu says that
- 167. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 153 Our workers produce food in a way that they inherited from their mother, grandmother or neighour. We do not need to use new methods. It is because the traditional way they know is what exactly natural and healthy is. I argue that these two elements both stimulate the authentic desires of customers and provide basis for retaining the loyalty and the trust of customers. That these products are produced by some “traditional” women has a crucial role in stimulating the authentic desires of people and qualify the food as more “natural” because of the nature- culture dichotomy that places women in the domain of nature. As one of the most central and fundamental dichotomies, the nature-culture dichotomy equates women with the category of nature and all that is associated with women are associated with the domain of nature. Farm- based products produced by women through the way they have inherited from the previous generation are considered as pure, uncontaminated and original. Food gains a more natural and thus authentic sense by this way. One of the central points I attempt to make in this paper is that food is valued and capital is accumulated in the sector of farm-based natural food production through this strategic romanticisation of women’s knowledge and their experience in domestic food production. I have tried to show how the modern western epistemology has created its own power relations that categorize knowledges by creating certain dichotomies such as indigenous knowledge vs. modern knowledge, traditional knowledge vs. scientific knowledge and so on. The nature-culture binary opposition is one those dichotomies that the modern Western epistemology rests on. This dichotomy links women with nature and serves as a justification for subordination. In other words, this form of dichotomy defines all that is associated with women as worthless. Women’s food production rises on their culinary knowledge which is deemed to be disqualified in my case study. Hüsniye Hanım says that 90% of the people who work here didn’t go to university. And probably very few of them went to high school. Most of them only went to primary or junior high school. They are all brilliant people, but they aren’t qualified employees. I mean, for example, a cake chef has gone and been trained on cakes, so he knows everything from how to make it to how much calorie it has and what the ingredients involve. I mean, he is a bit like professional. But the employees here are not like that. They of course know what they do, but they have learnt it from their mothers, fathers, neighbours or friends. Although the non-professional and non-industrial character of how these women produce food is the very condition of value creation in this sector, it is still deemed to be disqualified and worthless. The reason behind it is rooted in the unpaid character of women’s domestic labour. Federici says that disqualification of any work women carry out in the wage work-force has been directly related to their function as unpaid labourers in the household (Federici, p. 94). Since any work that women perform in the household is defined as “non-work”, they are viewed as worthless even when done for the market (Federici). Just like capitalist economy is codifying women’s labour as unproductive and non- work, its institutions and power regime are doing the same for their knowledge. In my case, the disqualification of both women’s labour and knowledge is very much related to each other, because, food production as a form of labour rises on women’s culinary knowledge. This detail is obscured since it is acquired from previous generations rather than universities or other “scientific” institutions.
- 168. Bermal Küçük /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 154 5. Conclusion The demand for food perceived to be “natural”, “healthy”, traditional”, “local” is constantly growing among people with high and middle income. People go after food that is specific to a certain region or they prefer handmade production based on “traditional” knowledge rather than industrialized one. This trend can be viewed as a pursuit for “authenticity”. In this paper I tried to look at labour and production processes which lie behind the authenticated farm-based food production. When I conducted my field research in İpek Hanım farm in Nazilli, I observed that the women’s labour and culinary knowledge about food production that they have accumulated over time are two of the fundamental elements for the sustainability of farm- based natural food production. If women’s domestic labour and knowledge have always been subsumed by capital in different ways, then, it is worth asking the question how they are subsumed in the sector of natural farm based food production. I argue that capital in this sector is accumulated through both free appropriation and authentication of both women’s culinary knowledge. However, it is still deemed to be worthless and disqualified by the modern Western way of knowing due to the unpaid character of women’s domestic labour. References Braverman, H. (1998). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. Dalla Costa, M. (1972). Women and the Subversion of the Community in S. James & M. Dalla Costa, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community. Bristol: Falling Wall Press Ltd. Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia. Foucault, M. (1980). Two Lectures. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books. Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness. The American Journal of Sociology, 91 (3), 481-510. Tsouvalis, J., Susanne, S. & Watkins, C. (2000). Exploring knowledge-cultures: precision farming, yield mapping, and the expert- farmer interface. Environment and Planning A, 32, 909 – 924. Kloppenburg, J. (1991). Social theory and the De/reonstruction of agricultural science: local knowledge for an alternative agriculture. Rural Sociology 56 (4), 519-548. Maria M. (1998). Patriarchy and Accumulation on A World Scale, Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books. Marx, K. (1976). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin Books. Morris, C. (2006). Negotiating The Boundary Between State-Led And Farmer Approaches To Knowing Nature: An Analysis of UK Agri-Environment Schemes. Geoforum 37, 113–127. Pollanyi, K. (1968). The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Rebecca, S. (2009). Food, Place and Authenticity: Local Food and the Sustainable Tourism Experience. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 17: 3, 321-336.
- 169. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 155 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies A Different Approach to Feminist Standpoint Theory: Kathi Weeks’ View on Women’s “Labor” Practices Berrin Oktay Yılmaza* , Ayşe Öztürkb , Egemen Kepekçic a Istanbul University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Turkey bc Istanbul University, Women’s Studies, Turkey Abstract Feminist standpoint theory is generally based on the idea of producing feminist knowledge through women’s living experiences. According to the first supporters of the theory, women’s understanding and experiences are important in producing knowledge. They have a point of view special to feminists or women regarding truth. The first feminist standpoint theorists studied the unseen aspects of social life’s previously ignored “women’s work” starting from women’s daily experiences and they developed a standpoint theory epistemology from the concepts of “experience” and “privileged perspective”. However first studies have been made without taking the differences between women such as ethnicity, social class and etc. into account. Nowadays feminist standpoint theory discusses women's differences on a level of singularity. In other words subjectivities come into prominence instead of the concept of subject. At this point, Kathi Weeks’ feminist subjectivity project is an approach that needs to be discussed. Starting from the concepts which Kathi Weeks’ subject-subjectivity approach is based on, this paper aims to discuss how she conceptualizes women’s “labor” practices and what kind of a feminist standpoint theory she wants to develop. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Kathi Weeks; feminist standpoint theory; labor; subjectivity * Corresponding Author. Tel.:+90 212 440 00 00-10486. E-mail address: berrinokty@hotmail.com
- 170. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 156 1. Introduction According to Sandra Harding “[o]ne distinctive feature of feminist research is that it generates its problematics from the perspective of women's experiences. It also uses these experiences as a significant indicator of the ‘reality’ against which hypotheses are tested” (Harding, 1987: 7). This interpretation becomes a resource for constructing an epistemology based on women’s experiences. No doubt that feminist methodology and feminist epistemology based on women’s experiences are different from the traditional science and the methodology and epistemology they are based on. In other words, they don’t adopt the methods of positivist sciences. Of course, this differentiation introduces theoretical debates on which feminist methodology and especially feminist epistemology are based. Feminist methodology’s questioning dominant dichotomies such as subjective/objective, rational/emotional, man/woman, masculinity/femininity which positivism and positivist sciences are based on (Ecevit, 2011: 42) actually brought feminist epistemology debates into light. Once we go beyond dichotomies which feminist epistemology criticizes and put aside the principles such as objectivity, neutrality, and rationality; how will the social reality of women be explained? Is there a special approach particular to women when it is about reality? What is the theoretical foundation of this approach? Can the feminist standpoint theory provide us with a solution on this issue? Feminist standpoint theory is based on Marx’s claim that the positions different classes occupy in the society provide them with different perspectives about the social reality. The positions they are in also provide them with different perspectives that present different understandings about social relations. At this point he strengthened his argument by using working class as a base. According to Marx, it is possible to reach a sound understanding of the capitalist social reality through this socially marginalized but centrally important in economic sense (Tanesini, 2012: 170-171). The first feminist standpoint theorists such as Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Dorothy Smith, took Marxist definition as the model when explaining their theories. They explained the division of labor in order to prove that there is actually women’s perspective. They made analyses that show women are both marginal and central depending on circumstances (Tanesini, 2012: 171). The argument of feminist standpoint theory in general is the idea that “feminist knowledge and the production of feminist knowledge are based on social power and the feminist knowledge is based on women’s experiences” (Ecevit, 2011:47). In other words it can be defined as efforts to understand the world starting with the experiences of women. It is important how and with which methodology feminist standpoint theory is dealt (Bora, 2008: 32). According to some feminist theorists who base their studies on women’s experiences in daily life, a hierarchical society makes up different standpoints staying connected to social life experiences. How can women’s experiences in daily life be linked to feminist epistemology? What kinds of explanations can standpoint offer us at this point? Could there be a theoretical level of women’s experiences? These questions are important to examine feminist standpoint theory. Like Sandra Harding, Dorothy Smith argues that the path to knowledge crosses with women’s lives and emphasizes the importance of women’s perception and experiences in producing knowledge; however instead of taking personal experience itself as the “real knowledge”, she prefers to take it as a starting point (Öztan, 2013:38). According to Bora: “it is not possible to know the experience directly.” In any case “having an experience” is perceiving and evaluating something lived in the light of pre-acquired values, concepts and approaches. When we regard the experience itself as the resource of knowledge, the point of view of the experiencing person forms the knowledge. Thus, the questions related to theoretical nature of experience,
- 171. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 157 formation process of perspective and social links of the discourse in which the experience is expressed are all left out. Therefore, the experience needs to be approached not as a direct resource of knowledge, but as a process formed by the subject among all these links, as a particular level of social reality” (Bora, 2008: 33). Surely, there are many criticisms about feminist standpoint theory. The shared experience may not be the right starting point for a feminist epistemology. Moreover, Joan Scott criticizes using experience as the essential foundation of knowledge and claims that it means ignoring the constructed nature of experience (Tanesini, 2012). As Ecevit states, there are different arguments among feminist theorists on issues such as which knowledge is to be chosen, how the concept of power will be perceived; how feminist knowledge will be founded in experiences of women and in differences among women, while establishing the connection between feminist knowledge and feminist reality (knowledge and power)” (Ecevit, 2011:50). Having worked on the issue after the first feminist standpoint theorists, Kathi Weeks brings a different point of view to the feminist standpoint theory that re-constitutes the feminist subject by approaching the feminist standpoint theory from women’s laboring experiences. According to her, “[s]tandpoints are constructed around the potential ontological and epistemological consequences of … laboring practices, around the subjectivities that emerge from these practices. A standpoint is constitutive of and constituted by a collective subject, in this case a feminist subject grounded in women’s laboring practices and situated within the larger field of social relations” (Weeks, 2004: 188). The aim of this paper is to discuss how Kathi Weeks conceptualizes women’s laboring practices and how a feminist standpoint theory she wishes to develop based on the concepts which her feminist subject- subjectivity approach is grounded. The discussion will be based on Kathi Weeks’ book called “Constituting Feminist Subjects”. 2. Towards Kathi Weeks’ alternative feminist standpoint theory According to Kathi Weeks, standpoint theorists focus on laboring practices in different ways: For example “Sandra Harding focuses on the epistemological dimensions of standpoint theories, grounding them in the more general conditions of women’s lives (including but not confined to laboring practices) and the positions of marginality (1991). Patricia Hill Collins (1991) grounds black feminist thought in black women’s experience, of which labor is one determinant among many” (Weeks, 1998: 162). Stating that she focuses on the studies of the first feminist standpoint theorists such as Nancy Harstock, Hilary Rose and Dorothy Smith, Weeks refers to their works (Weeks, 2013:19). Instead of focusing on the system theories, Hartsock develops a standpoint theory where she locates feminism within the subject’s activity and experience based on the idea that women have privileged standpoints (in a similar way with Lucas’ claim that proletariat has a privileged, different perspective about the social relations and this perspective reveals the reality) (Taghan, 2014: 10). For Hartsock “women's lives differ structurally from those of men… like the lives of proletarians according to Marxian theory, women’s lives make available a particular and privileged vantage point on male supremacy … [and] feminist standpoint theory can allow us to understand patriarchal institutions and ideologies as perverse inversions of more humane social relations” (Harstock, 2004:36). Meanwhile Hartsock is criticized for universalizing women’s experiences. She assumes all women share common experiences just because they have the same female body. She bases her assumption on corporeality. This assumption explains why she prefers to use the term “sex” instead of “gender” (Tanesini, 2012: 181). No doubt that this standpoint theoy which ignores the differences among women and which is
- 172. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 158 based on only the idea of shared experiences has the risk of essentialism. In her later works, Hartsock accepts that women have different positions; however, she comes to a grinding halt with how to build totality among those different positions of women in political struggle (Taghan, 2014: 10). It may be meaningful to hear what Kathi Weeks says about where Hartsock is stuck. Because she states that what she actually wants is to develop a concept of totality that is compatible to a feminist standpoint project dedicated to construction of feminist subjects. She says what she wants to develop is a concept of a complex totality of social forces that contains a multiplicity of subjectivities and is open to multiple sites of contestation and possibilities for rupture. She draws attention to the fact that what will be analysed under the rubric of totality are the conditions of possibility for the construction of antagonistic standpoints (Weeks, 1998: 73). Stating the necessity of a new subject theory based on arguments above, Weeks talks about “moving beyond the subject models referring to a natural core, authentic humanity, or enduring metaphysical essence” (Weeks, 1998: 1). At the heart of this theory lies the problem of not being able to focus on the multiplicity of subjectivities as an alternative to unified subject of feminism. In this context, some of the necessities she asserts are focusing on the antagonistic power of feminism and paying attention to how subjects, constructed by the system, rise against the existing order instead of submitting to it. If we acknowledge the concept of agency during life, Weeks -pointing out the fact that denying the construction of subject will cause us to deny the agency (Weeks, 2013: 9)- considers a critical approach is necessary towards humanism, functionalism, determinism, and essentialism. This new theory, the limits of which we can simply mark accordingly, is a non-essentialist feminist subjectivity theory which is built by modernist and post-modernist paradigms. Also, this theory is formed within the context of “feminist standpoint theory” which is a model of socialist feminism (Weeks, 2013: 11). Its aim is to present different totality concepts developed in socialist feminism. Theorists, who developed system theories by locating women’s lives in a theoretical social frame, hoped to develop a better explanation of the powers that maintain the daily oppression of women. She bases her socialist feminist system theories on Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Heidi Hartmann and Iris Young and discusses the socialist feminist tradition which brings us to standpoint theory through three system theories (113-128). According to Weeks, while this theory was developing, the aim was to construct an alternative standpoint theory based on all the standpoint theories. Of course, standpoint theory, too, has contradictions and points to criticize as all the other theories. However one of the most distinguishing aspects of this theory for Weeks is that this theory presents hope and liveliness based on continuity. Moreover, standpoint theory, including three basic concepts such as totality, labor and standpoint, lies before us as a valuable concept in the reconfiguration of the feminist subject (Weeks, 2013: 13). Weeks discusses these three concepts as the founding concepts of feminist subjects/subjectivity. Giving them a new meaning and content, she rejects both essentialist approaches and the approaches that make them seem natural. These actually include the rejection of the approaches that ignore the subjectivity of the women’s laboring practices and place women in a passive subject position in capitalist social relations. For her, making women’s labor valuable should catalyse the approaches of collective subject/subjectivity (Weeks, 2013). The concept of totality is a valuable concept for Weeks since it has a systematic in itself. For her, totality has a content that links and relates the social with and positions according to each other and places it in a context as a whole. Hence, Weeks regards totality as a concept to be protected as it simplifies all these relationship forms to a systematic (Weeks, 2013: 14). Totality is a concept that includes the multiplicity of subjectivities. It is also open to multiple sites of contestation and possibilities for rupture in a way, and progresses towards the totality of forces as well as being complicated (Weeks, 1998: 73).
- 173. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 159 Emphasizing there are links between social structures and subjectivities which have constitutive features, Weeks gives importance to the concept of labor which is significant for standpoint theory. For her, labor practice, especially women’s laboring practice, whether paid or not, is the necessary constitutive practice of the social. Standpoint theories try to evaluate the ontological and epistemological consequences of laboring practices (Weeks, 2013: 18). Weeks asks a few questions in this context and starts answering them. To sum up, laboring practices produce and maintain the necessary social forms of collectivity. These practices, especially women’s unpaid work, are not contained, accounted for, and of course valued in the existing mode of production. Therefore, these practices have the potential to enable and cultivate antagonistic subjects (Weeks, 1998: 7). This can be defined as an indicator of totality, criticism and motivator in standpoint theories. In this standpoint theory where the concept of labor is placed as a constitutive factor, focusing on the ontological and epistemological consequences of laboring practices, Weeks draws attention to the constructive and destructive aspect of the subject. This situation opens the door for the model of collective subjectivity. Why does Weeks emphasize subjectivity this much? Causing the differences among women to draw attention, the emphasize on subjectivity prevents generalizations from being made without taking these differences into account. It tries to avoid the bias that “a universalized category of woman” would create (Ecevit, 2011:36). The play Lysistrata1 written by Aristophanes in BC 411 could be given as an example for the standpoint theory that Weeks tries to establish. More precisely the topic of this play can be read as the antagonistic dimension of women’s labor and the call of totality of different subjectivities. Lysistrata, one of the heroines of the play, makes a call to all the women in the city in order to stop the Peloponnesian war. It is a call that demands all women to get together and stop the war that men started. And women will do this by using the femininity roles and their sexuality that were attributed to them. Lysistrata sees this situation which can usually be perceived as a disadvantage as an advantage. The aim is to turn the disadvantage into an advantage, put pressure on men and stop the war. This solution means grasping the double meaning of the existing practices. If we go back to the systematic Weeks established regarding women’s labor, this situation is in some way the use of destructive and constructive practices that emerge from labor for a social change. 3. Kathi Weeks’ conceptualization of “labor” While establishing her theory, Weeks states that her aim is to develop a feminist subject model that is not essentialist. And the concept of labor is the keystone of this new subjectivity model (Weeks, 2013: 171). 1 This play written by Aristophanes is known as the first anti-war play in history. It is about the anti-war actions of a group of women who are fed up with men’s wars and their consequences. Lysistrata taking the lead, the group comes together and goes on a sex-strike for the war to come to an end. Far from their houses, they also stay away from the acts that are imposed upon them by that space. Not confining themselves with this they even capture the temple and treasury of the country. Although men struggle for a while against all these, sometime later they give up and reach an agreement that women demand. The winners are the women at the end of the play. This is women’s attempt of gaining public visibility and creating plurality in a collective act. However Associate Professor of Classics in Washington University Sarah Culpepper Stroup claims that these women who gain public visibility and cause a huge change in Aristophanes’ play called Lysistrata are represented not as Greek women but as hetairas instead (upper-class prostitutes who were courtesans in Ancient Greek). (http://www.bukak.boun.edu.tr/?p=313). Besides this critical view, what we would like to point out in this play is despite all the differences, different demands and sometimes their weaknesses it is their power what brings them together against power. What is notable here is these women’s being active against a male-dominated society. Women refuse these works in order to continue the struggle in this space and to reveal the value of these works, that is labor, which don’t have the slightest return. While doing this they are also transforming this to a political struggle. Being developed collectively, this struggle comes close to a model of collective political subjectivity.
- 174. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 160 Weeks’ concept of women’s labor is far from being a determination that is associated with women’s nature and that causes us to fall into biological essentialist trap mentally. Weeks, once again, highlights the historical and cultural determinations in which gendered divisions of labor arise2 . It is quite clear that for many centuries, patriarchy has associated caring labor, kin work, and concrete labor in the bodily mode like cleaning, cooking, washing up with women’s specific biological capacity. Weeks talks about a concept of labor that remains outside this association. For her, the imposed association that patriarchy makes between women’s laboring practices and their specific biological capacities is unacceptable. In addition, labor is not an original human essence that we are alienated from. On the contrary, labor should be interpreted as an inherent and creative power of social production and historical change (Weeks, 2013: 171). In this respect, labor is both an inherent creative principle and is strategic by nature. In order not to fall into similar essential traps, Weeks sees the inherent and strategic dimension of labor as a concept that may be activated in order to provoke a political discussion (Weeks, 2013: 175). Weeks clearly reveals that her own concept of labor is the criticism of existing conceptualizations of labor and she also utilizes Butler’s concept of performativity. She bases her argument especially on Butler’s definition of subject that is determined by its own construction. Performativity, which Butler qualifies as parodic practices, is in a way subversive because of its pastische3 influence. This influence is the disappearance of the subjectivities that are protagonists as men and women and of a systematic that makes them exist (Butler, 2010: 238). Thus, while Weeks opens a space for this destructive formula which Butler links with performativity, she also doesn’t refrain from criticizing it. The criticisms being significant, the main importance of Butler’s concept of performativity is its constructive aspects for a non-essentialist feminist subject model, according to Weeks. Contingency4 is only one of them. In other words, by rejecting the deterministic determinations during the construction of the subjects, she accepts that this construction is made by repetitive practices. Weeks highlights that accepting such a contingency shouldn’t be perceived as the acceptance of an absolute contingency. She states that a standpoint based on the contingency that performativity presents will ensure the involvement in practices that constitute the subject. She also emphasizes that these practices will help construct a framework that serves for a political aim (Weeks, 2013: 187-188). This process of construction is expressed in an infinite circularity. Grounding her argument on Nietzsche’s formulation of “eternal return”, Weeks adopts the idea that the subject is a moment in being instead of a final existence. Moreover, this formulation also provides a basis for establishing collectivity. The practices of past and present contain within themselves the need for each subject to interpret and reconstruct her life. This need comes with collective effort and collectivity as a consciousness. In Weeks’ own words, such a standpoint is not far from the collective interpretation of subject positions (Weeks, 2013: 190). This collective interpretation is based on the standpoint pointing out subject positions that aren’t based on trascendent and natural essence. Hence, there are three significant dimensions: The first one, as Weeks insistently dwells on, is collective subjects. The subjects of feminist standpoints should, of course, be collective subjects. Moreover, feminist standpoints are focused on here, not solely women. Accordingly, the emphasis made on plurality is the third subsidiary point. Starting from these three points, Weeks points out to a unified project, not a single feminist 2 Although Weeks didn’t gather these determinations under a concept and didn’t point at this concept, here we will continue by emphasizing this concept is Patriarchy. 3 This French word means an imitation of an artwork. And in this context, as well, it is used to mean something similar. 4 Contingency in philosophy refers to the possibility of something both being and not being. Here the usage has a similar meaning. Since it’s the opposite of determinism, in the usage above too it is perceived as there is no single common reality. Instead, there are possible situations.
- 175. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 161 subject. Acknowledging that women have different subject positions shows the fact that these positions pave the way for plurality. Eventually, it could be stated that feminist standpoints create multiple, destructive and collective subjects (Weeks, 2013: 191). For Weeks, feminist standpoints in which multiple, destructive and collective subjects emerge need some deconstructive choices. One of them, for instance, is ironic laughter (Weeks, 2013: 192). Since ironic laughter as an oppositional attitude requires you to take a look at yourself and initially to be able to laugh at yourself has a privileged place. Relying on the possible criticisms she might get, Weeks accepts that ironic laughter is not the only way of negation and even that its destructive force is quite limited. In fact, she dwells on the importance of refraining from denial, which is one of the distinctive methods of irony, and on embracing the way of transforming to a critical practice as a reactional attitude5 . The person embracing irony turns to multiple meaningfulnesses in herself and chooses to laugh at them rather than denying them. In other words, it is something similar to the awareness of different states of subjectivities that constitute the person. It is in some way being in equal distance to all of them. Hence, what Weeks initially wants to emphasize here is realizing how far the states of subjectivities, which are rooted and indisputable in us, are from the ideal. The person doing this, that is, the person embracing the ironic attitude, makes way for both 'yes' and 'no' equally in terms of content and diversity (Weeks, 2013: 199). In other words, the person approaches all the differences that contribute to her own existence from equal distance. She neither gives up one for the other, nor idealizes them. There can be different states of subjectivities that constitute women, for example. While most of these states complete each other, it is also possible that there could be multiple conflicts among them. Therefore, when the states of subjectivities not without change and transformation are dealt in the entire totality, each of them comes up as states of being that are both affirmative and negative. In addition to the destructive aspect of irony, Weeks emphasizes the constitutive aspect of affirmation. Affirmation is not exactly a pratice of accepting, but instead the practice of creation. Pointing out the concepts developed by Antonio Negri who grounds his arguments in Marx's interpretation of laboring practice, Weeks regards affirmation as a political project (Weeks, 2013: 204). In Negri's works, affirmation is self-valorization. As Weeks cites, Negri develops a strategy of extending and recreating the scope of labor. This strategy in a way makes the groups that are the owners of the labor closer to self-valorization. Hence this is the process of affirming oneself as his/her labor gains value (Weeks, 2013: 206- 207). Based on this argument, Weeks defines feminist standpoints as acts of self-valorization and dwells on value- creating practices of women. Feminist standpoints are collective projects that motivate value-creating practices of women. It is clear that such collective projects help the antagonistic potential and constitutive possibilities of value-creating practices of women (Weeks, 2013: 207). Feminist standpoints are demonstrations of changing the content of women's necessary labor and extending its scope; and they have the tendency to subvert the dominant conception of labor. Therefore irony as a destructive mechanism, and affirmation/self-valorization as a constitutive mechanism come up as two versions of feminist standpoint. Of course, Weeks speaks of the value of these two sides to a great extent. However, the most significant thing is that there is a critical force and 5 The way Weeks takes irony seems to be similar to that of Richard Rorty. Rorty places irony right at the opposite of common sense. To sum up, common sense for Rorty is a kind of habit that has turned into de facto perception and is adopting oneself to the existing. On the contrary, ironist is nominalist and historicist. In other words, ironist, who after questioning the reality of the general concepts and even claiming that they are not real, emphasizes they are just names. Hence, ironist accepts that the social doesn’t follow a rule and function. For a more detailed analysis see Rorty, 1995: 113-143. Thereby, partially like Rorty, Weeks, too, embraces the aspect of irony that is against the definite. Therefore, she addresses its changing, transforming and conflicting aspect.
- 176. Berrin Oktay Yılmaz,Ayşe Öztürk, Egemen Kepekçi / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 162 transformative capacity. For instance, in terms of laboring practice, division of labor based on gender and race has quite an active role in the construction of social hierarchies. On the other hand, some laboring practices that the division of labor imposes have a destructive force (Weeks, 2013: 213). Hence, this duality reveals an aspect which both constructs and is constructed. With its destructive and constitutive aspects, laboring practice, for Weeks, is placed in a different position, as it creates both economic and cultural determinants and forms. What Weeks means in this project is not that each subject should be polite to and get along well with each other. Rather than a demand for being civilized, it is a call towards thinking about much more productive discussion veins and going after more challenging conflicts (Weeks, 2013: 221). 4. Conclusion Starting from her question that whether she can theorize an alternative standpoint model, Weeks concludes that in her own standpoint theory, which she establishes based on the concepts of totality, labor and standpoint, there are still open-ended questions that need to be answered. And, from this conclusion, she opens a space for rethinking the contemporary feminist theory and practice. That space prompts us to develop or to carry out a new feminist argument. As Aksu Bora stated, today, it is impossible to claim that the ideal of sisterhood, shared consciousness of oppression and awareness of daily changes maintain solidarity between women. If we are to talk about collectivity between women, we should look back on the reality that this collectivity will not be established based on oppression; but on desire, will and possibility of change, thus, through political agency (Bora, 2008: 189- 190). This new space of political activity both Weeks and Bora highlight may be the agonistic feminism which develops a new activity in feminism. In sum, this agonistic politics presented as a space of dynamic relations put forward several methods of discussion and struggle. This politics tends towards conflict rather than reconciliation, emotions rather than rationality, plural rather than singular, and contingency rather than essentialism (Kalyvas, 2009: 15). As Weeks highlights, here is an emphasis on contingency. With this emphasis, it is also claimed that the differentiation and separation emerging from power struggle cannot be rooted out of the area of social relationships. Basically, this is an area of being where benefits and identities are always in conflict; sometimes they become a whole and sometimes they collide. Just like in agonistic politics, it is also assumed that there is an area or network of dynamic relations among women in agonistic feminism. This feminist concept which does not presuppose the existence of different women experiences and subjectivities aims to carry out a politics that embraces differences and does not melt different womanhood situations in the same pot and is not essentialist. Also, in a similar vein as Bora, feminist politics, rather than referring to an abstract “solidarity between women”, should try to understand why power strategies of women is in opposition with each other in such a way that strengthens male dominance. Moreover, it should find out the connections between these strategies with "things to lose". Differences among women are not some "other" categories and of secondary importance compared to collectivity. On the contrary, these differences indicate that collectivity can be established in another dimension, which is political activity. With this perspective, a way to object the women’s politics turning into identity politics can be found (Bora, 2008: 194). The standpoint theory of Weeks based on contingency of women's laboring practices, and that contains acquired, selective and politically oriented collectivity is open to dispute. There is no doubt that this discussion will create new insights and discussions with new contemporary feminist theories and theorists. References
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- 179. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 165 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Women’s Movements/Groups and the State: Exploring Two Patterns of Engagement Betül Ekşi* Northeastern University, Department of Sociology, United States Marmara University, College of Communication, Turkey Abstract The issue of interactions between women’s movements/groups and the state has been the focus of scholarly interest for the last few decades. While feminists earlier were quite convinced that the state was inherently patriarchal and, thus, antithetical to women’s issues (MacKinnon 1983, Pateman 1989) thereby leaving no room for a meaningful interaction between the state and women’s movements, today the question is no longer whether feminists should engage with the state but rather how and how much (Connell 1990). This paper, through a critical analysis of the theoretical and empirical studies on the topic, aims to explore two distinct patterns of interaction between the state and women’s movements. Namely, the focus of this paper is a) engagement from within that applies to the case of women who work within the state, and b) engagement from outside that refers mostly to those located in civil society who work to transform the state from outside. The Australian femocratic experiment and the Islamic women employed at a state institution (Diyanet) in Turkey, and the interactions of both secular and Islamic women with the Turkish state will be discussed as respective examples to two forms of engagement. This paper suggests that interactions between any women’s movement/group and any state are not stable but rather change over time, presenting the possibility of greater engagement at times or deterioration of the existing relations. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women’s movements; the state; political engagements * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-507-543-3011 Email address: balkan.b@husky.neu.edu
- 180. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 166 1. Introduction The issue of interactions between women’s movements/groups and the state has been the focus of scholarly interest for the last few decades. While feminists earlier were quite convinced that the state was inherently patriarchal and, thus, antithetical to women’s issues (MacKinnon, 1983; Pateman 1989) thereby leaving no room for a meaningful interaction between the state and women’s movements, today the question is no longer whether feminists should put their energy into engaging with the state but rather how and how much (Connell, 1990). In light of the feminist literature on this topic, there tends to emerge several distinct patterns of engagement between women’s movements/groups and the state. This paper, through a critical analysis of the theoretical and empirical studies on the topic, aims to explore two distinct patterns of interaction between the state and women’s movements. Namely, the focus of this paper is a) engagement from within that applies to the case of women who work within the state, and b) engagement from outside that refers mostly to those located in civil society who work to transform the state from outside. First, I discuss the Australian femocratic experiment and the Islamic women employed at a state institution in Turkey as two examples to what I call engagement from within. Second, I compare the interactions of both secular and Islamic women with the Turkish state as an example to the engagement from outside. Specifically, some of the questions I ask consist of, what patterns of interactions between the state and women’s movements/groups exist? How do we explain the emergence of different patterns of engagement? What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of each pattern? A number of key points emerge from this analysis. First, left parties have proven to be relatively more open to engagements with women’s movements (i.e., as in the femocratic experience) but there are cases in which feminists have been successful in impacting gender related policies even in the face of pro-Islamic parties (i.e., as in the secular Turkish women’s movement). Second, among women’s movements/groups seeking interactions with the state, those working to engage from outside seem to be less concerned with the issue of co-optation. Third, different women’s movements/groups within the same nation-state may have quite different experiences with the state. Finally, the experiences of Australian femocrats and Turkish secular and Islamic women suggest that the relations between women and political institutions change over time, that it is interactive and dynamic rather than predictable and stable. Drawing on the “state-in-society” approach (Migdal, 1996; 2001), I do not treat the state and women’s movements/groups as completely separate entities. Rather, I see the state and women’s movements/groups as mutually constructing one another. In the same vein, adopting a multi-layered and non-coherent understanding of both the state and society (women’s movements and groups in this case), I draw attention to how various arms of the state interact with women’s movements and groups. Before moving onto the next section, I’d like to clarify what I mean by women’s movements and women’s groups. First of all, following Beckwith (2007) and Ferree and Tripp (2006), I distinguish between feminist movements and women’s movements. I identify feminist movements as a subset of the larger group of women’s movements. Based on Ferree and Tripp’s definition, women’s movements convene women as constituents under a diverse range of issues to make social change, while the goal of feminist movements is to “challenge and change women’s subordination to men” (6). Briefly, whereas women’s movements can be recognized based on their goals, women’s movements define themselves in terms of their constituents. Although it is crucial to analytically distinguish between them, Ferree and Tripp (2006) also warn against making clear-cut distinctions between feminist and women’s movements since women’s movements may adopt feminist goals in some specific historical contexts. While recognizing that not every women’s movement is a feminist movement, this paper takes women’s movements –distinctly feminist or not- as its subject. Yet the analysis in this paper is not limited solely to feminist/women’s movements but
- 181. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 167 also includes women’s groups that do not necessarily constitute a movement. . In this paper, some of the Islamic women, such as the employees of the state institution (Diyanet), may or may not be affiliated with larger Islamist movements but they, as a group, are also not part of any feminist or women’s movements either. For this reason, I call them women’s groups instead of movements. This article begins with a discussion of various theoretical approaches, including the feminist ones, to the state and argues that the interactive state-in-society approach that emphasizes the role of both structures and agency is the most useful for understanding different patterns of women’s engagements with the state. The theoretical discussion is followed by an analysis of the two patterns successively. In the conclusion, I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each pattern. 2. (Feminist) Theorizing of the State Since Catherine MacKinnon (1983) suggested, “Feminism has no theory of the state,” many feminist scholars have engaged in gendered analyses of the state. Yet the feminist state theory has not sprung from nowhere. A larger body of literature on the state has informed feminist debates on the state. Max Weber has been widely accepted as the first sociologist who theorized about the state. In his “Politics as a Vocation” essay, Weber defines the state as that entity which possesses a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force, and argues that politics is the sharing of state power between various groups within a bureaucracy. Although the state was somewhat tangential to their theory, Marx and Engels too wrote about the state. In their view, state power affects the class struggle, capital accumulation and expansion, and the struggles over the market in favor of the ruling class. However, since the main focus of this paper is state- society relations, however, the theoretical framework this paper rests on is the state-in-society approach (Migdal, 1996; 2001). Adopting a social constructivist perspective, Migdal argues that states and societies construct and transform one another. Neither the state nor society is a fixed entity. They are historical entities that have been/are/will be in the becoming (2001, 23). In addition, interactions between the state and society are possible due largely to their fragmented structure and conflicting interests, goals, and means. Such view of the state-society relations enables us not only to see the multi-layered, incoherent, and contradictory nature of the state and society but also in restoring agency to members of civil society – women in this case- who are traditionally considered the objects of state control. It additionally provides the necessary framework to study the state both as a set of institutions and as a process. At two ends of this spectrum stand liberal feminist tradition and radical feminist tradition. For feminists in the liberal tradition, who see the state in relatively benign terms, interactions from within have great potential. From their perspective, while the state has historically been dominated both nominally (numerically) and substantively (shaping policies and gender relations) there is nothing inherent about this domination. As women enter the public realm, become better educated, and take on positions of power, these gendered dimensions of the state can be overcome to create equality for all.1 In contrast, radical feminists who stand at the other end of the spectrum, however, do not have an optimistic opinion about either the state or the outcomes of potential engagements between feminists and the state. For radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon, feminists can never expect the state to liberate women because it is impossible to separate state power from male power. In her view, the state is male (1983, 644; 1989, 170). Accordingly, women and feminists have no ability to challenge the state or to expect the state to operate in their interests. However, there are some problems with such thinking. First, the idea that the state is male 1 For a discussion see Franzway et al. 1989.
- 182. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 168 dehistoricizes, naturalizes and reifies the state (Connell, 1990; Eisenstein, 1996). Also, implicit in this argument is the assumption that male interests are unified and inescapable, essentializing the male dominance. Such views are devoid of an intersectional perspective in that they do not recognize fragments and power relations operating among men based on class, race, sexuality, ethnicity and religion among other social divisions. And finally, by portraying women as mere objects of the state power, it does not recognize the agency of women. In recent years, an alternative approach has emerged which highlights the interactive nature of the state and women’s movements and groups. This more interactive approach to studying the relations between the state and women rejects the idea that women are passive in their relations with the state, thereby “restoring agency to feminist state theory” (Haney, 1996, 761; see also Randall & Waylen, 1998). This approach that arose mainly in the 1990s problematizes the “us vs. them” tendency that portrays women as the objects of state policy. Through her ethnographic research on the juvenile justice system, Haney (1996) illustrates both the multi-layered and contradictory nature of the state and how women engage with the juvenile justice system through challenging and/or conforming to the policies and practices of the state. According to this perspective, feminist state theory should analyze “interactions among state apparatuses, between state actors, and female clients, and between state institutions and communities surrounding them” (Haney, 1996, 774). In a similar vein, Vicky Randall and Georgina Waylen (1998, 1) maintains that the task of revealing how the activities of different women and women’s movements impact on the state and are, in turn, impacted by the state is as crucial as uncovering the gendered organization and workings of the state. In brief, in shifting the emphasis away from either a narrow structure (as in radical feminism) or agency (as in liberal feminism) approach, the new state scholarship seeks to provide a fresh look at women’s engagements with the state in order to understand when and where it offers opportunities or obstacles for women. My approach to studying the interactions between women’s movements and the state is informed by the interactive state-in-society approach that attends to multi-layered, contradictory nature of the state and the mutual transformation and constitution of the state and society. The state, in this perspective, is a collection of institutions, and contested power relations not located outside of society. In other words, the state is both a process and a set of institutions (Connell, 1990; Randall and Waylen, 1998). The two patterns of interaction between the state and women’s movements/groups are analyzed from this perspective. 3. Engagement From Within: The Cases of Femocrats in Australia and the Women Employees of a State Institution in Turkey This pattern of engagement is mostly attributed to interactions between liberal/middle-class feminists and the liberal state. In this section I discuss how the femocrats in Australia and the Islamic women employed at a Turkish state institution (Diyanet) interact with those state institutions in their respective nation-states. While the women in both of these cases work within the state, there are remarkable differences between their actual relations withe state institutions. Hester Eisenstein (1995) defines “the femocratic experiment” as” as the main strategy of the Australian women’s movement during the 1970s to enter federal and state bureaucracies in an attempt to bring feminist concerns into the public policy. It is a story of feminists using state power to empower women in society. Eisenstein maintains that, contrary to what Kathy Ferguson claimed about the antithetical nature of bureaucracy and feminism (Ferguson, 1984, ctd in Eisenstein, 1995), working within state bureaucracy, as a means towards greater gender equality stands as a viable option for feminists in Australia.
- 183. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 169 Scholars have identified two key factors that helped to shape this strategy: the willingness of the Labor party to share power and the political culture of Australia. The first factor relates to the relative openness and willingness of the ruling Labor Party-- which came to rule in1972- to incorporate feminists into bureaucracy (Eisenstein, 1995; Chappell, 2000) but we should be cautious about assuming that these favorable relations between the women’s movement and the Labor Party was a natural outcome of the latter’s party politics. However, considering the deteriorating relations between the state and femocrats under the liberal party rule, it is plausible to argue that the rule of the Labor Party set a fertile ground for femocrats to work from within government agencies to advance their agenda. The second key factor was that the existing political culture in Australia enabled different groups in society - including feminists and trade unionists – to not only engage with the state from outside but to also pressure the state to create agencies through which they could voice their claims and have an impact on policies (Chappell, 2000, 265). On the surface, these two factors seem to be the blessings of the liberal state culture prevalent in Australia, but this should not lead us to conclude that opportunities for political engagement have been served on a golden plate to feminists. The political mobilization of the feminist movement and their effort to make inroads into bureaucracy should not be downplayed in this story. In this respect, the femocratic experiment was made possible as a result of both the political mobilization of the feminist movement and the openness of the state bureaucracy due to the presence of a cooperative government and the existing political culture. The case of the women employees of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet)2 constitutes a similar case to the femocratic experiment in that like femocrats, the Islamic women personnel working for Diyanet too are located within a state institution. Although scholars have been mostly concerned with engagements of women’s movements and certain state institutions such as the legislative branch or the judiciary, not much attention has been drawn to interactions with other state institutions. Diyanet, which has historically been a predominantly male state institution both nominally and substantively, has been integrating women as official preachers and vice-muftis3 into its structure since the early 2000s. The incorporation of Islamic women into Diyanet occurred when a growing number of female students of theology departments at universities began to seek employment opportunities in the last two decades. This search for employment opportunities coincided with the changing policy of Diyanet, which opened its doors for women in the early 2000s. Therefore, the recent incorporation of Islamic women into a state institution may be read both as women’s effort to make inroads into a state institution as a site for employment (Hassan, 2011) and a state institution’s changing politics and discourse on women (Tutuncu, 2010). Scholarly interest into this new phenomenon - women preaching as state personnel - has begun to shed light on the ambivalent relations of Islamic women with the state. Women at Diyanet perform a wide range of duties including delivering sermons at mosques to, mostly but not exclusively, women audiences, issuing fatwas (opinion of a religious scholar or a cleric on an issue), and running a hotline service for women exposed to domestic violence among other tasks. Women preachers defend gender equality, in terms of education, divorce, inheritance, etc. They also harshly criticize polygamy and violence against women (which includes domestic violence and honor killings), encourage women to participate in public life, and 2 The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which is found in article 136 of the Turkish constitution, is a state institution established in 1924 after the abolition of the caliphate. It was formed as a bureaucratic unit operating under and reporting to the prime minister and has worked to promote a state-approved version of Islam. Its existence may be interpreted as the secular state’s effort to control religion. 3 Mufti is a top religious official at a local Diyanet office.
- 184. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 170 are convinced that women are entitled to fill the same positions as men, including religious posts. However, they also express a strong conservatism when it comes to homosexuality and women’s roles in the family and as mothers (Tutuncu, 2010, 610). Although they tend to promote gender equality through their sermons by arguing that the state ban on headscarves stands as an obstacle for women’s empowerment, they reproduce state discourse, and the patriarchal Islamic discourse when it comes to women’s position in the private sphere and the boundaries of women’s sexuality. Thus, the foundation of their women-friendly discourse is drawn both by the anti-feminism of patriarchal Islam and the formal equality of the state feminism-- which focuses on the public emancipation of women while only partially addressing the private issues, such as divorce and marriage, and disciplining women’s sexuality. Historically, the exclusion of women from mosque attendance has resulted in women’s isolation from the community. In modern times, both women and religious rituals have moved to the private sphere and the continued absence of women in mosques has contributed to the limited access of Islamic women to both the religious and secular public spheres (Tutuncu, 2010). The demand by women preachers to be part of the public/political sphere through their presence at Diyanet and mosques across the country could be read as a direct challenge to the limited presence Islamic women have in the secular public sphere - such as university campuses or many public offices. The ambivalent messages embodied by women preachers about the gender order and their presence in the public (state) sphere through their employment at Diyanet may be interpreted as Islamic women’s effort to engage with a state institution in the face of their exclusion from other state institutions. On the other hand, their employment in the prestigious ranks of Diyanet, as vice-muftis and preachers, indicates that their presence poses a challenge to the predominantly male hierarchy previously seen in the institution. But whether Islamic women’s nominal presence at Diyanet will lead to power sharing between men and women within the institution and whether their presence will translate into substantial outcomes for women in Turkey remain to be seen. The current situation is complicated by the fact that the relationship between women preachers and Diyanet developed under the pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) which makes it uncertain whether these favorable interactions will continue when another political party takes power in Turkey. 4. Engagement from Outside: The Case of Turkey’s Secular Feminists and the Islamic Women The second pattern of engagement between women’s movements/groups and the state may be phrased as “engagement from outside,” in which women’s movements/groups seek to engage with the state through their activism as civil society organizations or simply as individuals or groups located in civil society. The experiences of the secular women’s movements and Islamic women’s groups with the state represent important examples of engagement (or lack of it) with the state from outside. Understanding the nature of the interactions between various women’s movements/groups and the Turkish state requires a brief look at the history of (dis)engagements between women and the state in the nation- and state-building years. Until recently, a common assumption in the literature was that women’s rights were endowed to Turkish women without the activism of an autonomous women’s movement as part of the nation-building project (Kandiyoti, 1991). This view has recently been challenged by the rereading of the history of the Turkish Republic by feminist scholars (Arat, 2000). As the feminist accounts reveal, Turkish feminist women intended to establish the Women’s Republican Party as early as 1920s, which turned into a women’s association upon the recommendation of the founding father, Ataturk. After the initial silencing of independent women’s movement in the early years of the Republic, it was not until the 1980s that women’s movements/groups across political and ideological spectrum began to seek engagement with the state (Arat,
- 185. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 171 2000). Yesim Arat (2000, 120) argues that among various women’s movements and groups,4 secular women have been most successful in engaging with the state while Islamic women’s groups have largely failed to do so. The secular women’s political activism is a perfect example to how a women’s movement located in civil society can impact state policies for greater gender equality. Gul Aldikacti Marshall (2009) explores how the engagement between secular Turkish feminists and the state has been rendered possible through sustaining simultaneous interactions with the nation-state and supra/transnational entities in order to affect change at the national level despite the relative reluctance of the former to work with feminist movements. The Turkish feminists in Marshall’s study (2009), when their demands about women’s rights are not met by the nation-state, continue to pressure the Turkish state through their alliances with supranational bodies, such as the European Union and the United Nations, especially on the issue of gender discrimination in the Civil and Penal Codes, which represents an excellent example of what Moghadam calls “transnational feminist networks (TFN)” (2005, 64). Unlike the secular feminist movement’s active engagement with the state and the impact they have had on gender related state policies, we do not see a similar account of engagement between Islamic women’s groups and the state, ironically, despite their civic and/or political activism. Empirical studies on Turkish Islamic movements, such as the now defunct Islamist Welfare Party movement (White, 2002) illustrate that Islamic women’s groups within these larger Islamist movements remain peripheral to the engagements of those movements with the state. White (2002), in her study of the political mobilization of the Islamist Welfare Party in a working-class neighborhood in Istanbul, finds that although women contributed immensely through their local organizing to the party mobilization, their political activism, and service for the party, by no means, translated into their empowerment. Activists in the Women’s Branch had neither the power to affect the party politics nor were they given the political space to engage with the state as Islamic women of the Welfare Party. They did not have access to administrative or financial decision- making within the party. Thus, while women did much of the groundwork such as mobilizing women in neighborhoods through vocational training, election rallies, or street demonstrations against the headscarf ban, they were isolated from the center of power and policy making (White, 2002, 223-241). The fact that Islamic women have not been successful in engaging with the state does not necessarily mean that Islamic women’s groups in Turkey lack agency. In fact, there are few instances in which individual Islamic women such as Merve Kavakci,5 challenged the secular state for greater inclusion into the political sphere only to be reminded by the gatekeepers of the secular state establishment that the doors of the political sphere are tightly closed to Islamic women. Turam (2008) highlights the significance of “the age gap” between Kemalist secular feminists and the Islamic women for understanding the long-lasting polarization between the two groups of women. She mainly suggests that since secular Kemalist women are considerably older than the younger Islamic cohort, it puts them in a privileged position because they occupy positions of power within the public sphere – such as, college professors or experienced parliamentarians. She further maintains that as the economic and educational gap decreases, the polarization between these groups gets deeper. I argue that the intersection of this age gap with several other important factors is the key to understanding the relative failure of Islamic women’s groups in engaging the state compared to their secular counterparts. 4 See Arat (2000) for a brief discussion of the diversity among secular Turkish movements and Islamic women 112-14. 5 See Kim Shively (2005) for an extensive discussion of the Merve Kavakci affair, the case of an Islamic female elect deputy in 1999 from the Islamist Welfare Party and the backlash she received from the secular political parties in the Turkish Parliament, which resulted in her expulsion from the Parliament due to her headscarf.
- 186. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 172 The secular elite, both men and women, have had relatively early access to education and power positions in the public and political spheres in Turkey over several generations. Therefore, the secular elite women –although later than their male counterparts- have developed a familiarization with the political institutions earlier than Islamic women’s groups. Also, although the economic and educational gap between Islamic women and secular women have considerably declined, the impact of the parent’s economic class should be taken into account when examining Islamic women’s lack of engagement with the state. On the surface, there may not seem to be a direct correlation between the parent’s economic class and women’s groups’ ability to engage with the state. However, the cultural and social capital that secular women inherit from their families is closely tied to economic class that also plays a significant role in accounting for the difference in experiences of the secular and Islamic women with the state. Therefore, it is crucial to look at how the intersection of the generational gap, late access to education and power positions, the lack of familiarity with political institutions, and historical exclusionary practices by the secular state, its secular (male and female) elite, and Islamist men toward their inclusion in the political sphere all contribute to the lack of engagement between Islamic women and the state. An intersectional approach which pays attention to those multiple factors, including the privilege of the secular feminists compared to their Islamic counterparts provides a better understanding of Islamic women’s lack of engagement with (or their structural and systematic exclusion from) political structures. Otherwise, the role of power relations in explaining the different experiences of the secular women’s movement and Islamic women with the political structures gets unrecognized. The different experiences of secular and Islamic women in Turkey illustrates that the prospects of engagement with the state differs for various women’s movements and groups even within a single-nation state. Historical circumstances, socio-economic factors, and the state ideology toward different women’s bodies (covered/uncovered), and the ideologies of the women’s movements/groups help account for this variation. 5. Conclusion Empirical literature on interactions between the state and women’s movements/groups and the state reveal two patterns of engagement. Although those patterns overlap to some extent (i.e., as in the case of femocrats who operate in the political sphere, but backed by the activists in civil society), it is crucial to differentiate analytically between those patterns in order to capture variation in ideologies, strategies and relative success of different women’s movements/groups and their respective perceptions of the state, and how they are perceived by the state they (dis)engage with. The femocratic experiment, which is an example of the engagement from within, seems to be the closest in establishing institutionalization of power sharing between men and women. However, even the impact of femocrats in Australia may be loosened in the face of hostile governments. Also, the issue of the sustainability of the feminist agenda continues to be a concern for both radical feminists and femocrats. In this respect, those who seek to engage with the state from outside seem be bothered less by the question of co-optation than femocrats who are located within the state and radical feminists. The experiences of secular and Islamic women with the Turkish state reveal that a nation-state – and its various institutions- may differ in its attitude toward different women’s groups. The less a women’s group/movement adheres to the national ideal of women drawn by the state, the less open the state may become for engagement with that group. Also, the openness of the state branch Diyanet for the incorporation of Islamic women into its cadres in the midst of an exclusionary secular state illustrates the variation in different state institutions’ politics toward a particular women’s movement/group.
- 187. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 173 Finally, it may be concluded that the interactions between any women’s movement/group and any state is not predetermined and permanent in each of the patterns. Rather, interactions change over time, presenting the possibility of greater engagement at times or deterioration of the existing relations at others. References Arat, Y. (2000) From emancipation to liberation: The changing role of women in Turkey’s public realm, Journal of International Affairs 54 (1): 107-123. Beckwith, K. (2007) Mapping strategic engagements: Women’s movements and the state, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 9(3), 312-338. Chappell, L. (2000) Interacting with the state: Feminist strategies and political opportunities, International Feminist Journal of Politics 2(2): 244-275. Connell, R.W. (1990) The state, gender and sexual politics: Theory and appraisal, Theory and Society 19(5): 507-544. Eisenstein, H. (1995) The Australian femocratic experiment: A feminist case for bureaucracy. In M.M. Ferree & P.Y. Martin (Eds.), Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women's movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ___. (1996) Inside agitators: Australian femocrats and the Australian state. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Eisenstein, Z. (1983) The state, the patriarchal family and working mothers. In I. Diamond (Ed.), Families, politics and public policy (pp. 41-58). New York: Longman. Ferree, M.M. & A.M.Tripp. (2006) Global feminism: Transnational women’s activism, organizing and human rights. New York University Press. Haney, L. (1996) Homeboys, babies, men in suits: The state and the reproduction of male dominance, American Sociological Review 61: 759-778. Kandiyoti, D. (1991) (Ed.) Women, Islam and the state. Temple University Press. MacKinnon, C. (1983) Feminism, marxism, method, and the state: Toward feminist jurisprudence, Signs 8(4): 635-658. Marshall, G. A. (2009) Authenticating gender policies through sustained-pressure: The strategy behind the success of Turkish feminists, Social Politics 16 (3), 358-378. Migdal, J. (1996) Integration and disintegration: An approach to society formation. In L. V. De Goor, K. Rupesinghe & P. Sciorne (Eds.), Between development and destruction (pp. 99-106). Macmillan Press. ___. (2001) State-in-society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another. New York: Cambridge University Press. Moghadam, V. (2005) Globalization and social movements: Islamism, feminism, and the global justice movement. Baltimore: John Hopkins U Press.
- 188. Betül Ekşi /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 174 Pateman, C. (1990) The disorder of women: Democracy, feminism and political theory. Stanford University Press. Randall, V. & G. Waylen. (1998) Gender, politics and the state. Routledge. Shively, K. (2005) Religious bodies and the secular state: The Merve Kavakci affair, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 1 (3): 46 Turam, B. (2008) Turkish women divided by politics: Secular activism versus Islamic non-resistance, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 10 (4): 475-494. Tutuncu, F. (2010) The women preachers of the secular state: The politics of preaching at the intersection of gender, ethnicity and sovereignty in Turkey. Middle Eastern Studies, 46 (4): 595-614. Weber, M. (2007) Politics as a vocation. In H.H. Gerth & C.W. Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Routledge. White, J. (2002) Islamist mobilization in Turkey: A study in vernacular politics. University of Washington Press.
- 189. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 175 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies The Ottoman Empire’s First Private Women Courses (Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi) and Its Periodical Bilgi Yurdu Işığı Birsen Talay Keşoğlu* Nişantaşı University, Department of History, Turkey Abstract In this study, the Ottoman government’s education policy for in the beginning of 20th century and the women journals are studied but I focused especially on a specific journal Bilgi Yurdu Işığı (The Light of the Abode of Knowledge). The private courses (Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi/the School of the Abode of Knowledge) were established in the last period of the Ottoman Empire (1916) in order to contribute to the education of women by Ahmed Edip. In 1916 the Ottoman Empire participated in the First World War, the Party of Union and Progress was in power and, social-economic integration of women was supported by the government. Ahmet Edip and Macit Şevket published the journal Bilgi Yurdu Işığı (1917-1918) on a monthly basis. After the fifteenth issue, the journal continued with the name of Bilgi Yurdu Mecmuası. These courses were only for women and girls who were older than thirteen. According to the description in the first issue of the journal, the girls who were thirteen years old had their wedding dresses and were taken from the school and they looked after their siblings or helped their mother, so they did not continue school. The fifteenth issue completely devoted to the activities carried out until then and courses offered at the school and seminars have been published in the journal. The articles of Halide Edip also included in Bilgi Yurdu Işığı.The primary purpose of the courses was contributing to women's unfinished education. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women’s education; women’s journals; Ottoman Empire; nationalism; family life; motherhood; the party of Union and Progress; First World War. * Corresponding Author. Tel+90 212 210 10 10 Email address: birsentalay@gmail.com
- 190. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 176 1. Introduction This paper deals with the monthly periodical Bilgi Yurdu Işığı (the Light of the Abode of Knowledge), published by Ahmet Edip and Macit Şevket from April 1917 (1333), in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, and the Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi (the School of the Abode of Knowledge), that was founded at the initiative of the mentioned periodical. Bilgi Yurdu Işığı was published for 1,5 years in 1917 – 1918 on a monthly basis. It consisted of 20 pages. Its initial price was 20 asperse. The initial premises of the Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi were located in the Nafiz Paşa Mansion (Konağı) in Cağaloğlu, Istanbul. The mansion was adjacent to İnas Darülfünunu (Higher Education School for Women). It was open every day and inscriptions were received every day too. It is said to have received inscriptions even on Friday, the Muslim weekly holiday. A total of 17 issues were published. It was also meant to be a permanent reference since one section of every issue consisted of the written records of the oral courses dispensed and lectures delivered at the school. That section, called “the course section”, was to be used by those that had not been able to attend the courses or lectures. After its 13th issue, the periodical’s name was changed to Bilgi Yurdu Mecmuası. Initially, the issues were small in volume due to scarcity of paper. These were war years and scarcity of paper was a common problem for all the publications of the time. Ahmet Edip, one of the founders of Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi, had been a school master for about 6 years for a number of high schools for girls in Istanbul before founding Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi in 1916. The 15th issue of the periodical is entirely devoted to an account of the achievements of this school. The issue also explained the purpose of the periodical. The periodical also published articles that had already been published in other newspapers (Vakit, İkdam, Sabah) or periodicals relating to women’s education as well as some practical tips that were thought to be useful specifically for women. Anecdotes (Letaif) where the characters were mainly women is another interesting feature of the periodical. The country being at war, economical recipes also found their place in the periodical. There are also articles with scientific content where references are made to Darwinism. It was observed that Türk Kadını (1918-1919), a women’s periodical, also made references to Darwinism. In fact, given the low overall and especially female literacy rate of the day, only middle class and upper class women must have had access to these periodicals. One of the most interesting features of Bilgi Yurdu Işığı is its section called “Letters from Masune”. “Masun” means “protected”, “preserved” or “robust” and the choice of such a title is meaningful. At the time, women were considered to be in need of protection in all respects. Ironically, these letters were signed “Hür Kadın” (A Free Woman). This practice of giving messages through letters, which we observe in many women’s periodicals, was based on the personal relationship suggested by the idea of a letter. This personal relationship was used to transmit the message directly. Reading these letters would mean to the reader being involved in a personal relationship and having access to important secrets. The following quote was published on the cover page of all issues. It gives the message that women are under the heavy burden of being in charge of themselves, of their children and also of the nation as a whole, while men are in charge of only themselves. “When the man does not work, the result is only his own ruin; if it is the woman that does not work, the result is the ruin of not only herself but also of her children and of the nation as a whole.” Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi was the first private school for women in Istanbul. It dispensed literacy and child- rearing courses free of charge. It was almost a public service institution. The courses continued for about 3 years. In its first issue, the periodical provides a description of this private school for women it is about to set up and invites women to join it as follows: “Private school dispensing courses of science, language, music and art, one or several of which are to be selected by the student, for all enlightened ladies including housewives and governesses and ladies that had to
- 191. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 177 leave school or can attend school only partly or not at all due to their responsibilities at home. Unlike a regular school, the student of Bilgi Yurdu is not expected to be responsible for a whole curriculum but can select only those that she likes from among the courses of science, religion, art or language and be charged accordingly. The purpose of Bilgi Yurdu being to raise the cultural level of women, the tuition fees are very reasonable and sometimes the courses are free. Price reductions are also available for those that buy several courses. (Bilgi Yurdu Işığı, 1333, (1), 1) Bilgi Yurdu states that its main purpose is to improve the competencies and raise the cultural level of Turkish women and therefore women can pay their tuition fees later, once they have become involved in business and started earning money. It is noteworthy that the courses of literacy, child rearing and children’s health are free. There are Turkish language courses for foreign women and also sessions of physical exercise, which, the periodical says, are indispensable for all ladies. The periodical describes its services, and particularly the free courses, as part of its patriotic duties. The 6th issue of the periodical informs that the school has had 400 students only for the free literacy courses as at the end of the first year. When the ministry of education allowed women to attend medical school, Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi immediately organized preparatory courses for ladies for medical school admission exams. There is no definitive curriculum at Bilgi Yurdu Dershanesi nor a permanent teaching staff. This is why the periodical announces that prospective authors should address their articles to Bilgi Yurdu. No diplomas are conferred either. A housewife’s failure to do her homework is not considered a fault. Nobody is forced to go to the blackboard. The school dispensed education at the level of primary school, middle school, high school and higher education. The first woman to enrol at Bilgi Yurdu was İhsan Hanım, a final year student of Darülmuallimat (Teaching School for Women). As her own school was on holiday, she wanted to attend French courses at Bilgi Yurdu. She will be followed by eighty-four ladies within 20 days. The school started education in July 1, 1916. After this successful start and given, in particular, the high popularity it enjoyed at the end of its third year, it was widely believed that the school had already become permanent. The school recorded a 60 TL loss in the first year, which was reduced to a mere 27 TL in the second year. The fact that the courses, most of which were dispensed free of charge for encouragement purposes during the first years, and the publication of Bilgi Yurdu Işığı for those having missed the courses resulted in only a small loss at the end of the year and the popularity that the school enjoyed meant that Bilgi Yurdu should have good prospects. In addition, the support it received from third parties improved its capability of offering free courses. The school was open on Friday (Muslim holiday) to enable teachers of other schools to attend courses at Bilgi Yurdu. It remained open in summertime. In wintertime, it was open on Friday too. Education at Bilgi Yurdu was free for the wives, children, sisters and close relatives of soldiers killed in action. Free education was offered to those who did not have the means to pay, to the extent possible. Bilgi Yurdu was accessible to all women regardless of religion including Christian and Jewish women. 2. A “national and modern” education for women From the proclamation of Tanzimat (1839), education of girls became a significant issue for the Ottoman government. Especially after the proclamation of the second Constitutional Regime (1908), it became a state policy. The Union and Progress Party’s (UP) nationalist and modernizing attitude coincided with this policy. With the 1908 revolution the constitution was restored and a national assembly convened. A multi-party regime was introduced and a number of political parties and associations emerged representing a wide range of political colours. Newspapers and periodicals mushroomed. With the collapse of Ottomanism and Islamism, Turkish nationalism came to the fore. Liberal economic regulations and practices were introduced. But when it was realized that this new liberal economic regime benefited non-Muslim and foreign businessmen rather than the whole society, a “Turkish nationalism” became more pronounced and resulted in efforts to create a “national
- 192. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 178 economy” (Toprak, 1982, 18-19). The political policies of UP during the Second Constitutional Era had significant impacts on the social status of women. The liberal ideas of the first years of the Constitutional Era started to lose ground to an authoritarian Turkish nationalism and the new role of women started to be defined in nationalistic terms. With the initial liberal policies of the UP, which were intended to create a European-style national bourgeoisie, the status of women and their place in society became an important issue and efforts were made to replace the traditional way of life of women with an active participation in social life and emancipation of women became a goal (Toprak, 1998). UP’s women’s policy during this period focused on family as an institution. This policy will be shaped, to a great extent, by the ideas of Ziya Gökalp, who had a great influence on UP’s political and economic policies. Gökalp idealized the status of women in the pre-Islamic tribal society of ancient Turks and argued that women were then on equal terms with men but that their social and legal status deteriorated under the new Islamic civilization when Turks converted to Islam. With the revival of the national culture, this equality of genders would be restored.In this context, UP tried to get family life under government control as a political matter. The “new family” or “national family” became, under the leadership of the UP, the basis and essence of the nuclear family. Throughout this period, marriage ceased to be a merely religious matter. It was emphasized that the “national family” would not be based on a simple imitation of the modern or European family. According to the UP men, shaping the family was necessary for the elevation of the Turkish culture. This is why the “national family” could not be based on the typical family of any other civilization. The “national family”, a Ziya Gökalp idea, became a basic element of the UP policy. As a result of the developments in this period, the women’s issue started to be considered in terms of national economy and culture and women’s societies were created accordingly. Reforms were undertaken in education and law in favour of women. Courses and lectures were organized by Türk Ocakları (the Society for Turkish Culture) and by some women’s societies in order to educate women and to inculcate in them the ideal of a “new woman” and to encourage them to take a larger part in social life (Çakır, 2010). In particular, for the nationalists of the time, the status of women became an symbolic indicator of successful westernization (Güzel, 1985, 860). With these policies, early in the Second Constitutional Era, steps were taken to facilitate marriage. The Ministry of Interior, considering the financial burden of dowry and bride price a barrier to marriage (which also caused abduction of girls), sent notices to provincial governments ordering them to encourage creation of societies aiming to facilitate marriage. At wartime, family became more of a political issue. Decline in population due to war fatalities and lack of male workforce due to conscription meant that employment of women became a necessity, which, in turn, posed the risk of the moral degeneration or dissolution of families and, as a result, the UP leadership accelerated the implementation of its family policies. The Islamic Society for the Employment of Ottoman Women (1916), created by the government, had among its objects the implementation of the “encouragement” policy that was first adopted during that period. To prevent the dissolution of the family, all employees and workers of the Society were required to be married. Men should get married before 25 and women before 21. Financial support was also provided for future married couples. In line with these developments, we observe more frequent marriage announcements on newspapers starting from 1916 (Toprak, 1988). A comprehensive education covering a wide range of topics was fixed as a basic policy during this period the purpose of which was to create a new identity for the ‘new woman’ that would be in charge of bringing up the ‘new man’. It was thought that the Muslim Ottoman Woman lacked the qualities required for bringing up the ‘new man’. Many articles were written during late 19th and early 20th century on the education of women or, even, on the education of “mothers”. These were published in the form of books or in newspapers or periodicals.
- 193. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 179 “To date, we haven’t had any early childhood education. We imagine, our girls being uneducated, they should at least have an existence as mothers of future men” (Dr. Nurettin, Bilgi Yurdu Işığı (1333), Kadınlarımızda Terakki ve Tekamül (Progress and Perfection for our Women), (2). An examination of the content of Bilgi Yurdu Işığı makes it clear that the school and its periodical had been created as part of the implementation of these policies. In the periodical, it is said that women easily associated their gender with ignorance and felt free to say, whenever they committed an error, “what can I do, I only have the wits of a woman”, and it is argued that education was necessary to stop this. It is mentioned in particular that, as soon as they turned 13, girls were kept from education for marriage or household duties such as helping their mothers or looking after their siblings and that girls over 13 were not admitted to schools and turned down and sent back home even when they wished to continue their schooling. It seems that the ‘new woman’ should be brought up in such a manner as to become an educated mother and assume the responsibility of a mother for the Ottoman society or, even, for the world. So, motherhood, child rearing and mother-and-child health became included in the state’s field of action and responsibility. As the quotation above indicates, girls that had to stop schooling after turning 13 should be admitted to these courses to allow them to complete their education. In sum, all women (from 13 to 50) that had to leave school are fixed as the target of this initiative and the purpose is described as the creation of new generations through “a national and modern education”. In the fifth issue, it is argued that education would eliminate class differences. The daughter of a poor family could become richer, after receiving an education and getting a profession, in moral terms if not in pecuniary terms, and be at a higher position than the uneducated daughter of a rich family. This mentality will survive into the Republican era. Republican parents will take more care of the education of their daughters. The behaviour of women in public life was subjected to scrutiny and revised in every detail in order to correct its faulty aspects. An article titled “Women’s Affairs” (Kadınlık Şuunu) in the 8th issue claims that special wagons should be reserved for women in tramways and that it was not enough to separate women’s section in a tram from the men’s with a mere curtain. The justification of the suggestion is the supposed fact that women are inadvertently being too loud during their conversation forgetting the presence of men behind the curtain and overheard by men when they are talking of feminine private matters. But the article also adds that women do so because they are uneducated and uncivilized. Every activity such as meals, sleep, bath, walk and education being assigned a specific time of the day is considered a significant sign of civilization. Breakfast, lunch and dinner times should be punctually observed as well as nursing times; the arrangement of restrooms, rooms and wardrobes must be subject to clear rules. A housewife’s home duties must be scheduled as well. She is advised to assign a fixed day and a fixed hour to every job. It says “even receiving guests should be done at fixed hours in modern life” advising that guests should be received in the afternoon. It says that in modern life guests should be offered tea and that tea time is 5 o’clock in modern life. It gives a work schedule for the whole week starting with Saturday, a schedule that must be punctually observed. (Macid Sevket (a teacher of Teaching School for Women), Ev Kadını (Housewife), Bilgi Yurdu Işığı, 1333, (5)). In the context of a civilized and modern life, marriage and choice of husband figure among the main topics. In the 4th issue, in a story of Şükufe Nihal, arranged marriage is strongly criticized. The story is about the daughter of a very respectable family who lets their daughter free about her marriage decision, which leads to the happy marriage of Süha and Zerrin. In many other periodicals published during this period arranged marriage is criticized and it is underlined that both men and women should be free to choose their future spouses after a reasonable period of acquaintance. To support this view, an anecdote is published, dedicated to Cenap Şehabbettin, where arranged marriage is likened to blind man’s bluff and ridiculed.
- 194. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 180 Woman’s working is considered natural, and even necessary, in modern life. The 5th issue contains the announcement of a contest where women are asked which profession they would prefer and why. Prizes are promised for the best 10 answers. Such contests are common among the periodicals of the time. It is used as a means of attracting readers and fulfilling a mission. It is argued that women should work in order to be free from the domination of men and that the contest serves this purpose and that contestants have 3 months for submitting their answers. İsmail Hakkı (Baltacıoğlu) Bey, an important figure of the history of education in Turkey and the first president of university of the Republican era, praised the periodical, which shows that it was supported by the government. Baltacıoğlu published the periodical Yeni Adam (New Man) from 1934 to 1970. A congratulatory letter was published in the first issue, written by Yusuf Akçura, director of Türk Yurdu at the time, who is among the pioneers of the Turkish nationalist movement and a founder of the Turkish Institution for Culture. A permit was obtained from the Minister of Education, Şükrü Bey, for setting up the school without waiting for the end of the war given the importance of the gap that Bilgi Yurdu was expected to fill. Bilgi Yurdu started its operations with the publication of an announcement for inscription and admission in the Ramazan of 1332 (1916) and courses started early July. It is reported that the first lesson was attended by only eighty-four students. But, soon, the popularity of the school will increase rapidly and more than 200 people will apply for admission (Macit Şevket, Bilgi Yurdu Işığı (April 15, 1333/1917), (3). 3. The woman of which nation should be a model for the Turkish woman!!! In the first issue of the periodical, the owner relates his own experience in America in an article titled “Family life in America”. He mentions the co-existence of men and women in social life and explains, in relation to virginity which he mentions as a major source of concern for all men, that “American man found it natural to adopt the attitude of all men all over the world to this issue” (Bilgi Yurdu Işığı, “Bir İfade” (a relation) (5)) and says that no anxiety should be justified on this matter and that, “being conservative themselves, Americans were more like us, unlike the Europeans who exhibit a kind of levity on such matters.” Although it is emphasized in the periodicals of the period that Turkish woman has her own character and is unlike the women of any other nation, German woman is mentioned as a model in the field of child rising and housekeeping in the 10th issue of the periodical. According to the article, German women, apart from being involved themselves in every aspect of business life, are also good mothers that raise good generations. Still, even in this context, woman is not considered an individual independent from man but a very helpful organ of and an auxiliary to man. The author deliberately avoids regarding women as independent individuals.” The German woman is not only a good wife and an affectionate mother; she is also a perfect organ that shares business life with men in all aspects of life in general”. It may be argued that, before the First World War, the fact that many intellectuals and educators had been educated in Germany or sent there for research meant that a closer familiarity with and even a certain admiration for the German society developed. It is mainly the American and German women that are praised in these women’s periodicals and are mentioned as models for the Turkish woman. On the other hand, French and Levantine women are mentioned as bad examples. American women are praised for their being modern and civilized but also conservative and German women are mentioned as a model for their regarding motherhood and raising healthy generations as a social mission. According to UP men and their ideologues, social progress should be of a national character in the sense that the identity to be inculcated in the society should not be based on European identity but on Turkish national character. But, they still approved of the transfer of modern technology from Europe provided national identity was protected. Particularly after the Balkan Wars, Turkish nationalism came to the fore. UP men argued that in ancient Turkish society women were on equal terms with men and for this reason women should have equal
- 195. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 181 access to education. Turkish nationalists agreed that Islam had extended women’s rights. Ziya Gökalp asserted that the current backwardness of women had nothing to do with the principles enshrined in the Holy Book but was due to misinterpretations of it and put the blame on bad interpreters of Islam. In addition, as non-Muslim minorities had been developing their own respective nationalisms and became more and more disaffected from the Ottoman state, they believed that Turks needed their own nationalism if they wanted to survive and that, for this reason, a national consciousness should be promoted. Türk Ocağı (The Society for Turkish Culture) organized lectures, meetings and concerts with mixed audiences which made the Society a target for Islamist reaction. Turkish nationalists were grouped around periodicals such as Türk Yurdu, Yeni Felsefe Mecmuası, Türk Kadını and Bilgi Yurdu Işığı. The low status of women in the society was a common topic in such newspapers and periodicals. Ironically, it was men who were trying to design the new Turkish woman according to their own desires. 4. Women’s immorality drags the whole society into immorality!!! With the emergence of women’s periodicals of early 20th century, a new image of woman is drawn, which is educated, hardworking and modern, and promoted for the sake of public interest. But the promoters of this image are also afraid that this new woman should get out of control. This is why it is specially emphasized that an immoral woman will poison the whole society and brings it to its ruin. No reference is made to immorality in association with men. A man can at most be described as irascible and it is reminded that an irascible man will harm himself more than anyone else. Women’s immorality is much more harmful than that of men because it poisons the whole society (Macid Şevket, Ahlak ve Kadın (Moral and Woman), Bilgi Yurdu Işığı, 1333, (4)). The same applies to “fidelity”. Fidelity is a quality that a woman must possess but not a man. However, when comes patriotism, it is attributed exclusively to men. It is noteworthy that articles that exhibit the foregoing attitudes are written mostly by men. It seems that men of the time made a great effort to correct women. Proponents of the elevation of woman’s status also fought against the old idea that educated women should be more likely to be frivolous. These proponents even brought up the possibility of a mixed education. Note that at the time women were allowed to go to university but not to mix with their male school mates; they had to study in separate classrooms. It is argued that, naturally, an educated woman cannot be frivolous, but the idea that is thought to support this argument is not comforting at all: uneducated women are likely to be frivolous. It was feared that a woman who has never left her home should not know how to behave when she becomes, as a result of education, independent and free of the control of her family or close relatives, that she should become disobedient. This is the most clear source of concern. Another concern is the woman’s being disaffected from home duties, child rearing etc. A woman who rejects motherhood may lead to freedom, which leads, in turn, to immorality. This is why women’s education must be very carefully designed and regulated. It is strongly argued that girls’ schools should be cleaner, more orderly and more decent than other schools. Things may change but women will always be faced with the risk of suddenly becoming frivolous! We observe in many women’s periodicals of the time the claim that novel reading is harmful to women and to the youth, and our periodical is no exception. The periodical argues that Emile Zola’s novels are not recommendable for uneducated women and the youth while it finds Jules Verne’s works appropriate. The general opinion is that novels are merely for entertainment and fun. To preserve young girls’ morality and mental health, novels that they will read must be selected by their parents, claims the periodical. The same applies to plays and movies, which must be carefully selected by parents. As discussed above, women and their education is considered in association with family as an institution. However, the need for female workforce at wartime urged them to be involved in professional life and periodicals of the time support this tendency by promoting the image of a modern working woman. Some periodicals went even further arguing that working women are even more morally recommendable. But, in any case, motherhood
- 196. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 182 remains the principal role assigned to women. It is particularly emphasized that courses of science and mathematics etc. for women are only meant to make them good mothers. The “Tips” section in each issue provides practical information to facilitate home duties but it is mentioned at the top-right of the section that the latter is for “Families”. This is further evidence that woman is always associated with family and that women have no status independent from their role in a family. Ironically, all these regular articles are signed “Free Woman”. In the article titled “Women’s Affairs” published in the 7th issue is a discussion around a common topic: what kind of an education for women? It is stated, on the one hand, that women should learn only those items of knowledge that are specific to their role as a woman because otherwise they would tend to become masculine; while, on the other hand, it is argued that it is wrong to think that child-rearing, housekeeping and tailoring courses should be sufficient for high school girls. In all cases, it is admitted that high schools for girls must have courses required for educating girls as good housewives. Social code and civility is a constant topic in the periodical. Women are taught, in detail, how they should behave in society, as part of the project of uniform modern women, an attitude exhibited by almost all women’s periodicals of the time. In this context, a distinction is made between a good housewife and mother on the one hand and a frivolous woman on the other and it is emphasized that these two types of women will serve different purposes. A good mother should be contented with a sober make-up. Wearing a heavy make-up like a clown does not become a good wife and mother. Strict boundaries are drawn for that new woman that will be in charge of raising the new man. The periodical “Turkish Woman” published in the same period goes as far as defining the right physical appearance for a woman: she must be plump! 5. Isolated rooms for working women, open-air for men As a result of the lack of workforce due to conscription and fatalities during the war, employment of women became a necessity, which led to their being involved in economic and social life. That applies to the other European countries that were involved in the Great War as well. But the preference of isolated areas as the most appropriate work place for women betrays the real nature of the attitude to women in the Ottoman society. It is interesting to note that this observation made in this article, which deals with a hundred years ago, can easily be applied to what is happening today, in 2015, in the context of working women. It is always isolated rooms that are found appropriate for them. While today women are encouraged to study computer sciences, architecture etc., there are significantly less female civil engineers than male just because civil engineering is performed in open- air, on the field, outdoors and involves contact with outsiders (people that cannot be controlled), which are not working conditions that become a woman indeed! In fact, women are always associated with inner or private life and men with worldly affairs (Chaterjee, (2002), 101-102).The process of the formation of a nation-state and the concomitant modernization led to different concepts of masculinity and femininity. Although supported at wartime, employment of women was subject to limitations: women could only work in jobs that suited them according to the Turkish and Islamic customs. The relief associations set up during the war were meant to support only women and children. Although one cannot say that women rushed to work during the war, the state policy of employing female workforce did cause some of them to experience being breadwinners themselves. As explained in the periodical, till then no profession other than teaching could be imagined for women. But we know that, around these years, women had already started to work as accountants in companies or cashiers or sales ladies in shops. In the 3rd issue, a reader, with the nickname “Güzide”, says, in her article titled “Toy Trade”, that ministries, though reluctantly, opened their doors to women out of necessity at wartime but were not happy at all with that turn of events and that these jobs would cause difficulties for women. Because now, due to wartime conditions, men turned to free trade and it is customary that women should be employed in jobs that have become less prestigious. Jobs with larger income
- 197. Birsen Talay Keşoğlu/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 183 and greater prestige are first opened to men and these jobs are opened to women only when they have become less profitable and less prestigious. This trend is supported by an abundance of evidence. There are much more female teachers in Turkey than male. Even at universities, there are almost as many female academics as male but we also observe that female head masters or university presidents are much less frequent. Women always have to be contented with less. Small size cars are described as “women’s cars”. Event at meals, larger and better portions are reserved for men. A letter published in the 4th issue praises the involvement of women in professional life and criticizes dependency on men. It emphasizes that an educated working woman would be less exposed to male violence and that if some enjoy such a privilege now it is thanks to feminism. However, a speech titled “Great Women” by Halide Edip, of which a summary is published in the 6th issue, says that “feminism is simply against masculinity and that it creates unnecessary tension between the genders.” Ottoman intellectuals are confused about feminism. A liberal feminism, which avoids going to excesses, can be supported. In the 13th issue we even come across articles where it is argued that a true feminist is ‘the man’ who sends his wife and daughter to the Abode of Knowledge. Although the role of women as a housewife or mother is still praised, such a position is also assimilated to a parasitic existence. The value of housewives as workforce is ignored. But the article also states that feminism contributed significantly to the improvement of the lot of women and that women are persecuted by men and treated as mere objects. But, in the end, the article comes back to the topic of education and draws an optimistic picture of women’s emancipation through education. In the 11th issue, the periodical emphasizes that even with education and a job woman will never be financially on equal terms with men. Even in a job that does not require physical strength, women will not earn the same wages, argues the article and finds it natural. References Akşin, S. (2001), Jön Türkler ve İttihat ve Terakki, (İstanbul, İmge Yayınevi) Akşit, E. E. (2010), “Latife’nin bir jesti: Doğu ve Batı Feminizmleri ve Devrimle İlişkileri”, Jön Türk Devriminin Yüzüncü Yılı, ed. Sina Akşin, Barış Ünlü and Sarp Balcı, (İstanbul: İş Bankası) Akyüz, Y. (2013), Türk Eğitim Tarihi M. Ö. 1000- M. S. 2013. 24. baskı (Ankara: Pegem Akademi) Arat, Z. F. (1998), “Kemalizm ve Türk Kadını.”, 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler, edit. A.B. Hacımirzaoğlu, (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt) Bilgi Yurdu Işığı, (1333/1917- 1334/1918), (1-15), İstanbul. Bulut, F. (1999), İttihat ve Terakki'de Milliyetçilik Din ve Kadın Tartışmaları, v.2, (İstanbul: Berfin) Chatterjee, P. (2000), “Kadın Sorununa Milliyetçi Çözüm”, Vatan Millet Kadınlar, edt. Ayşegül Altınay, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları) Çakır,S. (2010), Osmanlı Kadın Hareketi, (İstanbul: Metis) Durakbaşa, A. (2002), Halide Edip Türk Modernleşmesi ve Feminizm, (İstanbul: İletişim) Gökalp, Z. (2013), Türkçülüğün Esasları, (İstanbul: Bilgeoğuz) Gökalp, Z. (2013), Türkleşmek, İslamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak, (İstanbul: Bilgeoğuz) Güzel, Ş. (1985), “Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Toplumsal Değişim ve Kadın”, Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, (İstanbul: İletişim).
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- 199. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 185 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Appearance as Reference: Women and Lookism in the Labor Market Bojana Jovanovska* Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany Abstract People judge other people on the basis of their appearance in the moment of meeting them. Appearance based discrimination is considered to be social phenomena, which is produced on the basis of someone’s exterior qualities. This prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of appearance has been termed as lookism. Lookism can be associated with sexism (and also with other –isms, such as racism, ageism, etc.) due to it imposes an obstacle to achieve equal opportunities in different spheres of the social living. The importance of the individual’s appearance in the process of employment is evident in many forms. In many of the job advertisements one can find enclosing a recent photograph of the candidate an essential requirement of the application process as the personal biography of qualifications. The lookism phenomena generated a discussion regarding the norms of the society concerning what is beautiful or attractive and what is not, and their implications in the labour market. These appearance norms are constructed by the society and may differentiate from one culture to another. But what is more than obvious is that society standards regarding appearance have real consequences for people, especially for women. In this paper I discuss gender and appearance as intersecting domains of inequality in the labour market, hence how appearance burdens the discrimination of women in the employment process. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Discrimination; gender; intersectionality; labor market; lookism; * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +389 70 242199 E-mail address: bojana_jovanovska@yahoo.com
- 200. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 186 1. Introduction “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a proverb we all know, but the truth is that we all do judge and we do it all the time, despite the consequences it might cause. We live in a society where the personal appearance is highly valued and we make judgments of other people based on their external look. Although it appears that judging people on their look is more of a subconscious phenomenon than a conscious one, the reality is that those judgments sometimes might seriously affect some people’s life. Whether named as “beauty prejudice”, “beauty bias”, “lookism”, “appearance discrimination”, this phenomena has become an important topic nowadays. Although many assume that physical appearance has a huge role in certain professions such as modeling, acting, even customer service, appearance seems to have much more influence on the careers of people, whether it affects hiring, salaries, promotions, benefits, etc. Gender stereotypes frequently operate to limit women’s participation in political and public life as well as in other areas of employment. Many researches have emphasized the importance of appearance in the interview process. Now, more than ever, it is clear that physical appearance has a significant effect on the outcome of the job interviews. Leaving a good impression on the job interview does not depend solely on one’s communication skills and qualifications for the job, but also very much on the candidate’s physical appearance. In this paper I will give a brief overview of the key points related to the concept of intersectionality, followed by an analysis on the intersection of gender and appearance, as categories which I tackle as important for the scope of my research. Afterwards, the focus of my discussion will be the intersection of gender with appearance as one structure of oppression that as a result creates different experiences in the lives of women in their inclusion in the labor market. 2. The concept of intersectionality Describing it as an indispensable methodology for development and human rights work, Symington (2004) defines intersectionality as an analytical tool for studying, understanding and responding to the ways in which gender intersects with other identities and how these intersections contribute to unique experiences of oppression and privilege. The implementation of the intersectional analysis helps to understand the convergence of different types of discrimination, resulting in a unique product at the point of intersection. Kimberle Crenshaw is a feminist author who was the one being acknowledged inventing the term intersectionality itself, as an attempt to understand the different experiences of women of color regarding the multiple oppressions they face in everyday life. Leslie McCall (2005), in emphasizing the importance of the intersectionality concept, claims that it is the most significant theoretical contribution that women’s studies have made so far. From an intersectional framework, categories such as gender or race are not reducible to individual attributes. They form a mutually constituted system of relationships composed of unique locations of inequality that are experienced simultaneously, therefore the gendered expectations that men and women encounter in specific social settings would depend on the simultaneous combination of the multiple categories they occupy (Vespa, 2009, 366). Regarding equality policies, they have been created within, for example, either strictly gender or ethnical or age considering, framework. Although we could say that gender equality policies have been designed to tackle a very broad population (all women or all men) when it comes to any form of oppression, the concern
- 201. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 187 that the intersectionality concept challenges is that those policies are in fact defined very narrow and instead what they promote is gender-blindness. The blindness concerns the omission of different forms of oppression women face, not solely because they are identified as women, but as a result of a variety of interlocking identities which produce a distinct experience. That experience should not be understood as a
- 202. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 188 simple combination of identities, as a result of just adding up different forms of discrimination that increase women’s burden, but instead what actually happens at the point of intersection. As a relevant point of intersection in this paper I analyze the connection between the category of gender and appearance (look), analyzing the implications of physical appearance of women in the labor market settings. 3. Discussing appearance While the primary intersections that Crenshaw explores are regarding race and gender, she considers that the concept of intersectionality can and should be expanded by factoring in issues such as class, sexual orientation, age, and color (Crenshaw, 1991, 1245). When discussing the issue of appearance, the positions could vary from one relating to the relativity of taste, to one as a category which should be protected by legislation. People like attractive people. Without even being consciously aware people assume that attractive people possess more respectable values than other that are not that good looking. Studies on beauty show that much of what we find attractive is consistent over time and across cultures. In general, people find symmetry and averageness of features attractive in faces. Pogontseva argues that idealized images in marketing communications can be harmful for society, just because media produced stereotypes about what is beauty and ugly, and as the result media produce discriminative behavior (2013, 111). 3.1. Appearance as basis for discrimination Discrimination represents an action that denies social participation to certain categories of people based on prejudice. Discrimination results as a comparison of the treatment between persons of different genders, races, classes, etc. In the work of Iris M. Young (1990, 196) discrimination is defined as an explicit exclusion or preference of some people in the distribution of benefits, the treatment they receive, or the position they occupy, on account of their social group membership. Therefore the membership in a certain social group imposes disadvantages to its members, based mainly upon inaccurate judgments about their worth or capacities. When it comes to appearance based discrimination, it is considered to be a social phenomenon which is produced on the basis of someone’s exterior qualities. Since the appearance of an individual is often the first thing that others notice, as such, it is a trait that is often used to judge and compare people (Zakrzewski, 2005, 432). In that context, Tietje and Cresap locate lookism as pre-ideological, as its primarily an aesthetic experience, an immediate attraction or repulsion at the physical presence of others, hence we judge people on the basis of their attractiveness within seconds of meeting them (2005, 38). Many authors discussing appearance as a basis for discrimination tend to use the term “lookism”. Tietje and Cresap define lookism as prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of appearance (2005, 33), while Pogontseva with the term lookism refers to any discrimination under the influence of different and varied evaluations of what is considered to be beautiful or not beautiful (2013, 109). Kimmel (2013) refers to lookism as the preferential treatment given to those who conform to social standards of beauty. Discrimination based on beauty is rooted in the same sexist principle as discrimination against the ugly. Both rest on the power of the male gaze - the fact that men’s estimation of beauty is the defining feature of the category.
- 203. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 189 In the United States of America one of the first studies related to the issue of lookism has been conducted in the 1980s. Under lookism one refers to any discrimination under the influence of different and varied evaluations of what is considered to be beautiful or not beautiful. This is one of the most common themes in European research –the study of the stereotype “beautiful is good” (Pogontseva, 2013, 109). But according to Subhani and Iqbal the phenomenon of “what is beautiful is good” has been detected world widely and almost in every culture (2012, 3). For a long time most of the discriminative practices regarding appearance have been considered normal. Tietje and Cresap (2005) argue that neither essentialists nor constructionists made the connection between lookism and social ethics, hence both theories seem to have functioned as means of denial. According to Pogontseva (2013), at the present stage we can notice a growing number of studies on the role of physical attraction and the visual attractiveness or unattractiveness as a factor influencing the behaviour of people in various fields of life (advertising, judicial decisions, employment, elections, etc.), as well as phenomena of categorization and discrimination aimed against the appearance of another. Pogontseva comes to a conclusion that since appearance becomes a way of visual communication and stratification, thus, appearance is a factor of discrimination (2013, 113). Tietje and Cresap (2005) discuss the necessity of a moral argument that lookism is unjust and that some kind of policy intervention is justified, so they provide an argument they find in John Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” from 1971, although he did not specifically deal with the issue of injustice related to appearance. They therefore refer to Rawls’s dispute on the natural assets, stating that natural talents and abilities were arbitrary from a moral point of view (the natural assets Rawls had in mind were abilities, talents, or character traits whose development was mediated by social circumstances). According to Rawls, the common understanding of equality of opportunity, that no one should be disadvantaged because of her race, sex, or social background, ignores the way in which opportunities are related to underlying factors such as natural talents and abilities- assets that are morally arbitrary (Tietje and Cresap, 2005, 40). Conforming to Rawls’s argument beauty is would be considered a natural asset if it improves opportunities. Nowadays people are very often discriminated for their physical attractiveness. Discrimination based on the various components of physical appearance results in “premia” for those individuals characterized by certain attributes and in penalties for persons failing to match the given standard (Busetta, Fiorillo and Visalli, 2013, 1). The results of the study of Busetta, Fiorillo and Visalli (2013) of the Italian labor market showed that gender seems to have little discriminatory effect considered by itself, but it takes relevance when it is interacted with attractiveness, especially for women.
- 204. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 190 3.2. Lookism on the labor market “Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference”. (Aristotle) The “buzz” over the lookism phenomena generated a discussion regarding the norms of the society concerning what is beautiful or attractive and what is not, and their implications on the labour market. These appearance norms are constructed by the society and may differentiate from one culture to another. Women searching for job, as well as employers looking for workers, have different cultural backgrounds and the norms about what society prefers or not as some kind of standard are distinct. Therefore, women’s experiences in the labour market settings are diverse and, although we can discuss about the existence of appearance discrimination of women in the labour market, we cannot make generalizations about a unique experience. Lookism, as a prejudice toward people based on their appearance, has been receiving increasing attention, and it is becoming an important equal-opportunity issue. People that can be perceived as attractive are given preferential treatment and people we find unattractive are denied opportunities (Tietje and Cresap, 2005, 31). According to Nickerson (2013) in the workplace, lookism is a problem that was first identified in the 1970’s. Awareness has surged in recent years as companies have been cited for discriminating based on factors such as age and gender. Studies have shown light on disturbing instances where overweight people make less than their counterparts and workers have indicated that they are aware of instances where attractive co-workers have been promoted over their less-attractive counterparts. Tietje and Cresap (2005) align lookism along with racism, classism, sexism, ageism and the other –isms in that it can create what may be unjust barriers to equal opportunity in the workplace and education. The importance of the individual’s appearance in the process of employment is evident in many forms. In many of the job advertisements one can find a enclosing a recent photograph of the candidate an essential requirement of the application process as the personal biography of qualifications. Some of the employers are not even withholding to enclose prerequisites as good looking, young women, or attractive in their advertisements. Scholars have argued that employers’ dependence on looks as an employee selection criterion likely stems from an “attractiveness stereotype”, which leads individuals to assume that those who possess physical beauty also possess a host of other positive characteristics, including intelligence and social competence (Fleener, 2005, 1314-1315). In the work of Zakrzewski (2005) she discusses that since attractive people are generally viewed as being more intelligent, likeable, honest, and sensitive than their less attractive counterparts, the appearance not only affects our social interactions with others, but impacts the ability to obtain employment. Zakrzewski analysis on different studies tackling this particular issues have shown that attractive people are more successful at obtaining employment than their less attractive counterparts, as well as that that attractive individuals enjoy greater opportunities at their places of employment (2005, 433). Many economists focus their researches on the relation between productivity and appearance discrimination. From the employers perspective the discrimination that favors good looking people by rewarding them with promotions and higher salaries is justified if productivity increases (Tietje and Cresap, 2005, 46). Yet, despite scientific uncertainty of this relation, Tietje and Cresap claim that employers
- 205. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 191 apparently believe that good looks contribute to the success of their companies, because the trend is to hire for looks, even though employers risk charges of illegal discrimination (2005, 32). Some authors, as Zakrzewski, state that because appearance discrimination has the same harmful effect as gender, racial, religious, or national origin discrimination, it should also be prohibited by statute, and therefore should only be considered by employers when it is found to be a bona fide occupational qualification (2005, 434). One of the most evident and highly important effects beauty has on employability is at the very entrance of the labor market, namely the first stage of the hiring process. In fact, many employers use appearance- based hiring as a marketing technique (Cavico, Muffler and Mujtaba, 2012, 792). People that are found attractive are given preferential treatment and people that are found to be unattractive are denied opportunities. According to recent labor market research, attractiveness receives a premium and unattractiveness receives a penalty (Tietje and Cresap, 2005, 31). James (2008) points out that when two equally qualified women apply for a position the employer would rather hire the applicant that he/she finds more attractive because society taught us to associate beauty with other favorable characteristics. Some authors use the term “halo effect” in describing the phenomena when the interviewer overlooks the applicant’s education, experience, and abilities in favor of the candidate’s appearance. Gehrsitz (2014) terms the “halo effect” as a situation in which the perception of a respondent's attractiveness might be influenced by other impressions the interviewer gains over the course of an interview. This “halo effect” assigns qualifications to an individual based on their appearance, often resulting in the hiring of someone who might not be even qualified for the position. Employment discrimination issues embody a fundamental tension between employers’ freedom to market an image and employees’ rights to equality and autonomy (Fleener, 2005, 1303-1304). Employers across industries share the business strategy of hiring employees whose “look” furthers the company’s marketing campaign or reinforces its image (Fleener, 2005, 1304). The importance of the individual’s appearance in the process of employment is evident in many forms. In many of the job advertisements one can find enclosing a recent photograph of the candidate an essential requirement of the application process as the personal biography of qualifications. Although it is not legal (in this case I am referring to Macedonia), employers tend to use these “techniques” as part of a primary selection of the hiring process. 3.3. The real costs for women facing lookism in the labor market Women in the labor market have fought a long battle to prove that their qualifications are fundamental for their success. But according to Furness (2012) their efforts may have been in vain, as many studies find good looks, a winning smile and a little gentle flirtation may be the key to securing a job after all. Many employers would rather hire someone they find attractive and enjoy spending time with than the perfectly qualified candidate. In their work on lookism, Cavico, Muffler and Mujtaba (2012) refer to the study of James (2008) who points out that when two equally qualified women apply for a position, one would rather hire the applicant that one finds more attractive because society taught us to associate beauty with other favorable characteristics. Ruettimann states that “ugly” is not a protected class. Although there are laws that prohibit employment decisions based on race, religion, national origin, age, and sex that can fold into the amorphous and misty world of appearance, but those rules say nothing about attractiveness. Daniel Hamermesh, author of
- 206. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 192 “Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful”, found that beautiful people earn 3 to 4 percent more based on their looks alone (Ruettimann). According to Fleener (2005) looks-based employment discrimination is permitted in most jurisdictions and it represents a long-important marketing strategy that is becoming even more prevalent in efforts to market products to fickle audiences and is likely a natural psychological process. In their paper “Physical Attractiveness or Referrals: Which Matters The Most?” Subhani and Iqbal analyze the contribution of physical attractiveness and recommendations in the hiring of employee. Their findings confirm that it is the physical attractiveness which matters the most when an organization goes for hiring on any hierarchical level (Subhani and Iqbal, 2012, 2). The attributes of beauty work in connection with the success of a person, people relate to the idea that good looking people do perform well, consist more confidence and are able to work more efficiently as compared to not so good looking people (Subhani and Iqbal, 2012, 3). In almost every sector of business, attractive people are found to be more successful as compared to unattractive people, they get more salary, they get easily promoted, and they get money if they want to, they can convince their colleagues or people faster, and even they can get out of a trap more easily than unattractive people (Subhani and Iqbal, 2012, 3). Referring to the study of Harper (2000), Busetta, Fiorillo and Visalli state that the “penalty” for being unattractive is about 15 percent for men and 11 percent for women, because beauty is considered to be linked with social skills, health and intelligence (2013, 4). Mobius and Rosenblat have worked on decomposing the beauty premium that arises during the wage negotiation process between employer and worker. In their paper “Why beauty matters” (2006) Mobius and Rosenblat provided evidence that the most beautiful workers are considered to be more confident, and their self-confidence determine a pay rise. Workers of above average beauty earn about 10 to 15 percent more than workers of below average beauty (Mobius and Rosenblat, 2006, 2). They have identified three channels through which physical attractiveness raises an employer’s estimate of a worker’s ability: the confidence channel and the visual and oral stereotype channels. The confidence channel operates through workers’ beliefs: we show that physically-attractive workers are substantially more confident and worker confidence in return increases wages under oral interaction. The two stereotype channels affect employers’ beliefs: employers (wrongly) expect good-looking workers to perform better than their less attractive counterparts under both visual and oral interaction even after controlling for individual worker characteristics and worker confidence (Mobius and Rosenblat, 2006, 2). In Gehrsitz’s (2014) research on physical attractiveness as an important determinant of labor supply, he found that physically attractive men and women are more likely to work positive hours than their average looking peers. They are also more likely to be in full-time employment (Gehrsitz, 2014, 14). Nowadays the internet has completely changed the labor market. Online recruiting through job portals has increased enormously and has positively impacted the hiring decisions as well. Most of the hiring nowadays is done through informal channels such as LinkedIn and Facebook, the hiring managers definitely want to check out these two sources to get a suitable employee before going for formal procedure of proper job advertisement in newspapers or business magazines (Subhani and Iqbal, 2012, 6). The belief that "what is beautiful is good" is so widely accepted that some employers attempt to put in place processes and procedures which try to eliminate or reduce the possible influence of attractiveness. Some forbid the attachment of photographs to application forms, others try to ensure selection boards are made up equally of males and females; still others attempt through very strict competency-based, structured interviewing to focus on getting evaluations based only on work-based competency evidence. They all try
- 207. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 193 to reduce impressionable ratings prone to “halo effects” (Furnham, 2014). Some have even suggested using technology to help fight the bias, through methods like blind interviews that take attraction out of job selection (Graham, 2013). Proponents of extending antidiscrimination law to cover looks-based discrimination have asserted that negative stereotypes associated with looks are perpetuated by the same process and carry the same dangers as those associated with race and sex (Fleener, 2005, 1315). In reality, discrimination frequently occurs because of multiple, interconnected, mutually reinforcing motives (Fleener, 2005, 1322) co-occurrence of discrimination on multiple dimensions, therefore we must include the concept of intersectionality in every sphere of tackling this issue. However, the sad truth is that so long as the appearance discrimination is not connected to sex discrimination and that any appearance standards are applied equally to men and women, then the appearance discrimination is legal (Cavico, Muffler and Mujtaba, 2012, 797). 4. Conclusion The affinity of the society for beauty obviously has real economic consequences for people (Cavico, Muffler and Mujtaba, 2012, 791). In the analysis of the labor market practices, examining the interaction of gender and appearance, it is apparent that these factors have a negative effect on women. In this context, the employment of the intersectional approach is necessary in analyzing the experiences of women, as well as the policies which produce the discrimination in order to provide a more relevant response for their improvement in the future An individual's appearance is often the first thing that is noticed by others, making it a difficult characteristic for them to ignore. Moreover, the concepts of beauty, attractiveness, and appearance are so ingrained in members of our culture that it would be a difficult task to remove them altogether from the hiring process (Zakrzewski, 2005, 460). Although lookism sometimes might appear as gender-neutral, the workplace, however, isn’t, therefore, as Kimmel (2013) states, the glass ceiling is reinforced by a looking glass. In their work, Busetta, Fiorillo and Visalli (2013) give even an ironic statement that searching for a job seems to be just like a beauty contest, therefore it is better for unattractive women to invest on aesthetic surgery than in education. Lookism, along with all other forms of prejudice, is probably normal over the long run (Tietje and Cresap, 2005, 34). It is already difficult to determine discrimination based on categories such as gender, age, race, and discrimination based on beauty is certainly more difficult to prove. One of the main problems is that there is no way to determine all the effects of beauty discrimination (Tietje and Cresap, 2005, 41). Nevertheless, reality demonstrates that it exists and it produces vulnerability. References Busetta, G., Fiorillo, F. and Visalli, E. (2013). Searching for a Job is a Beauty Contest. Munich Personal RePEc Archive, No. 49392. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49392/ Cavico, F., Muffler, S. and Mujtaba, B. (2012). Appearance Discrimination, “Lookism” and “Lookphobia” in the Workplace. The Journal of Applied Business Research, 28(5), 791-802. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299.
- 208. Bojana Jovanovska /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 194 Fleener, H. (2005). Looks Sell, But Are They Worth the Cost?: How Tolerating Looks-Based Discrimination Leads to Intolerable Discrimination. Washington University Law Review, 83(4), 1295- 1330. Furness, H. (2012). Bosses more likely to hire someone they fancy. The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9710004/Bosses-more-likely-to-hire- someone-they-fancy-study-finds.html Furnham, A. (2014). Lookism at work - To what extent does your physical appearance determine your life chances? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sideways- view/201404/lookism-work Gehrsitz, M. (2014). Looks and Labor - Do Attractive People Work More? Labour, 28 (3), 269–287. Graham, R. (2013). Who will fight the beauty bias? Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/08/23/who-will-fight-beauty- bias/Kq3pbfOy4VRJtlKrmyWBNO/story.html Kimmel, M. (2013). Fired for being beautiful. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/fired-for-being-beautiful.html?_r=0 McCall, L. (2005). The Complexity of Intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1771-1800. Mobius, M. and Rosenblat, T. (2006). Why Beauty Matters. American Economic Review 96, no. 1: 222- 235. http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3043406/mobius_beauty.pdf?sequence=2 Nickerson, P. (2013). Should Lookism Become a Newly Recognized Form of Discrimination? Labour Blawg. http://www.labourblawg.com/discrimination-law-2/should-lookism-become-a-newly-recognized- form-of-discrimination/ Pogontseva, D. (2013). Modern Social Phenomenon of the Appearance Discrimination. Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia Sociologica, V(1), 108-114. Ruettimann, L. Ugly people want to work for you – Now what? The Conference Board Review. http://www.tcbreview.com/tcbr-blog-feed/laurie-ruettimann-hr-youre-doing-it-wrong/should-you-hire- ugly-people.html Symington, A. (2004). Intersectionality: A Tool for Gender and Economic Justice, 9. AWID. Tietje, L. and Cresap, S. (2005). Is Lookism Unjust?: The Ethics of Aestethics and Public Policy Implications. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 19(2), 31-50. Vespa, J. (2009). Gender Ideology Construction: A Life Course and Intersectional Approach. Gender and Society, 23(3), 363-387. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Zakrzewski, K. (2005). The Prevalence of “Look”ism in Hiring Decisions: How Federal Law should be Amended to Prevent Appearance Discrimination in the Workplace. Journal of Labor and Employment Law, 7(2), 431-461.
- 209. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 195 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies The Impact of Educated Women in the Upbringing of Children Brikena Dhulia* , Kseanela Sotirofskib ab Aleksandër Moisiu University, Albania Abstract Education is a process which is realized by many interactive factors. Dilemmas on which of them is often predominant are the object of research in academic circles. Nowadays, when, more than ever, is needed the European citizen capable of meeting the educational and cultural diversity in the United Europe, the education of children is a long-term challenge that requires a good strategy. In this regard, we will focus on the civic education. Who will take responsibility for the civic education of Albanian children, along with their general education, though these processes are not seen separately from each other? What are the predominant factors that influence this process? In our paper our object will be the impact of educated women (variable of sex and education). There are various theories to explain the complex process of socialization of gender roles. Albanian Education sector produces a variety of statistics on education and all key indicators are divided by sex and age. Based on these statistics we will analyze the impact of educated women in the upbringing of children. Education is a field in which there have been good achievements in terms of access for women and girls. Education is one of the values that have traditionally been estimated by Albanian society. The high level of education of Albanian women and girls best shows that they are successful, and that for them education is the key to achieving a higher status in their family and society In the paper we will further discuss the impact of educated women, compared with the non- educated ones in the education of children, without separating problems in the family sector. Education is the main instrument of society, through which social change cannot be achieved. It is linked to a particular social context, which should be seen as an individual right, where individuals have the opportunity to improve their social welfare and even the social change through the civic education of children first. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Education of children; main instrument; interactive factors; historical and cultural; social change * Corresponding Author. Tel.:+0-355-694-017-277 E-mail address:kenadhuli@yahoo.com
- 210. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 196 1. Introduction Education is a process in which realization many factors influence and interact. Dilemmas which of them are often predominant are often the object of research papers in academic circles. Nowadays, when more than ever the European citizen should be able to cope with cultural and educational diversity in the European Union, the education of children is a long-term challenge that requires well thought strategy. In this regard, we will rely on civil education. Education is one of the main factors that determines the level of citizen participation in the decision- making process. In general, the higher the level of education a person has, the higher the chance that he / she takes part in decision making. The reason for this may be because people with high level of education are able to better understand the importance of civil involvement in different processes, the importance of civil responsibility, the need that local institutions have for experiences and different opinions as well as the guarantee of the decisions in harmony with civil requirements. This is the duty not only of the educational institutions but also of the educated women. Brager, Specht, and Torczyne define participation as a tool to educate citizens and to enhance their skills. It is a means to influence decisions that affect the lives of citizens and an opportunity to transfer political power. Another researcher, Armitage defines citizen participation as a process through which citizens act in response to public concerns, express their opinions on decisions that affect them and take responsibility to bring about change for the good of the community. Who will take responsibility for civil education of Albanian children, along with their education while these processes are not seen separately from one another? In our work we will have as the object of the paper the impact of educated women (variable sex and education). There are various theories to explain the complex process of socialization of gender roles. Albanian education sector produces a variety of statistics on education and all key indicators are disaggregated by sex and age. Based on these statistics we will analyze the impact of educated women in the upbringing of children. Education itself is a gendered social process, formed and developed based on the level of economic, social, historical and cultural development of a society . Education is a field in which there have been some good results in terms of access for women and girls. Education is one of the values that traditionally has been estimated by Albanian society. The high level of education of Albanian women and girls shows clearly that they are successful, and that education is the key to achieving a higher status in the family and society. In the paper we will deeply explain the impact of educated women, compared with those uneducated in the education of children, not sharing the problems involving the family factor. Education is society's main instrument through which social change can be achieved. It is linked to a particular social context, which should be seen as a right of everyone, where individuals have the opportunity to improve their social welfare and even social change first through children’s civil education. 2. Active citizenship from the statement of the principle of operational achievements Based on this statement we will enable the interpretation on one of the factors creating active citizenship, educated wife and mother. There are at least sixty countries in the world that give some institutional knowledge in the form of experiences and activities that qualify as "civil service." Although the term has a specific meaning, the distribution of these international initiatives shows an increased attention to an always
- 211. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 197 growing urgent need to promote civil participation and engage in socially useful activities on the part of the young population. Basic framework; promoting active citizenship. Predominant factors affecting civil education of Albanian children. This new population generates cultural heritage conveyed by their families, mainly mothers, which are more present in their children's lives. Every democracy, in fact, should be food for the citizen soul and the transmission between generations of the founding values of the national community: an "imaginary community", built actively and culturally produced mainly by politicians, intellectuals, institutions (Anderson, 1996), which needs a continuous review and update. This update to the youth more than by anyone else is realized by women (mothers), which foster civil spirit of love and responsibility for everything. School, thanks to increased levels of education, can act on the cognitive level, transmitting knowledge of the history of the country or the principles enshrined in constitutional requirements. Knowledge is not enough, however, to make citizens active and aware, the schools should interact with parents (mothers) and the more educated they are, and the more responsibly they do realize the mission of civil citizen. Education level impacts on different interpretation of historical facts, related to fundamental factors of history development and of the national sentiment. For example; social development and entry into globalism, after the 90’ led to the necessity of recognizing the various historical facts, previously untreated. This inevitably led to the review of history, and therefore textbooks that address specifications of the Albanian historical development. Besides teachers are the educated mothers disputing between the facts historically treated in between two Albanian political systems, totalitarian dictatorship and democracy. Among the observations of a significant number of students it is observed that children who come from families whose parents are uneducated, either do not pay attention to different facts of the interpretation of history, or are not attentive when these facts are shown. Educated mothers and children integrate themselves in a social reality in support of the creation of civil virtue. Civil virtue is much stronger if it is involved in a network of reciprocal social relations. A society with virtuous individuals but isolated is not necessarily rich in a society of social capital. The empirical analysis of historical trends soul citizen in its manifestations different, to highlight the fact as civic-mindedness and readiness to take an active part in social and political life is not an achievement forever, but subject to variability , changes in the seasons of growth and decline. Compared with studies in the world: e.g.;, in American studies, the data show a decline in the direction of civil spirit in the past three decades, although recently the new generation is giving signs of awakening. To combat the decline and strengthen the awakening, Putnam says firmly, "we have a great need for creativity to generate a renewed group of civil; of institutions and channels for the world in which they live and are able to renew their civil life. In the Italian case, there was an accompanying decrease in the participation of young people. According to the Euro barometer survey, the proportion of young Italians who in 2001 participated in associations was only 44%, compared with a value of 54% in 1997 and 50% for the average of European countries. In detecting IARD, young people are active in more than one group, it was 51.8% in 1996, fell in 2000 and 46.8% in 2004 to 35.3%, a decline of more than 16 percent, within a period of 8 years (La Valle, 2007). On the other hand there is a growing number of young people who feel an important social commitment in their lives, from 16.9% in 2000 to 27.3% in 2004.
- 212. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 198 Expanding Space between social demands and institutional responses introduces the phenomenon of volunteerism and organized solidarity. This phenomenon actually is not encouraged by educated mothers because educated women often do not work on voluntarism basis. Educated women are those that promote the artistic heritage and civilized environment, both in terms of home environment, as well as civil and school environments challenging their children’s life. At a conceptual level, the same dichotomy between paid and leisure work does not seem appropriate when it comes to assessing and using in different ways the forms of community engagement. Even the concept of volunteering, of course free of charge as an asset in favour of socially worthy goals, having exhausted the range of ways in which people can have dedicated a part of their time to the community forms do not always and necessarily free but have not been paid in terms of a contract, do not always come from civil society, but are also invented, encouraged or promoted by public institutions. Another factor in stimulating the civil perfection inherited to children of educated women is the different way of behaviour towards different forms of vulnerability and marginalization. Age, ethnicity, gender, etc are also a factor which often determines the level of their participation in the processes of democratic governance and civil education. The reasons for this are often associated with the level of discontent that they have in relation to institutions, lack of trust, non-representation of their interests by the institutions, their exclusion from the process of discussion and important public decisions etc. Generally, from research conducted in Albania the uneducated mothers do not follow the children's ability to discussions and debates, and often they are remotely positioned from the decision making. In 1969 Sherry Arnstein created the idea of "participation rates", which functions continuously, starting from the most exploited and powerless, to those who have the most power and control. On Arnstein’s scale eight 'levels' of participation are proposed, within three broad categories (passive citizenship, creating the image of active citizenship and active citizenship). By studying the behavior of 100 mothers and their 200 children we conclude that educated mothers meet the levels of establishing citizenship image helping with their behavior and active citizenship. Fig.1 We have explored only the creation of the image of the active citizenship, where the legend shows that about 75% of citizen image is created by educated mothers. This kind of image is observed in different informing situations, consulting, and different decision-making participations. Passive citizenship in percentage is almost equal in both groups of the survey (uneducated-educated women). Active citizenship Sales 1st Qtr 2nd Qtr
- 213. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 199 is established at 80%, mainly by civil decision making and citizen control by the children of educated mothers. Fig.2 Creating the image of active citizenship (Information, Consultation, appointments/symbolic participation). Active citizenship (sharing power, civil decision-making, citizen control). As an example, the OBEZH's methodology presents three different levels of cooperation between citizens and authorities in the formulation of public policies. 3. Assessment of students' knowledge of citizenship according to Devi Kerr Students were asked to complete an evaluation, which focused on the concepts of citizenship, as well as traditional knowledge of social science. The data collected in this way are used to build a ladder, which allowed the researchers to assess the knowledge of students. This test was conducted with 200 of our children taken under observation in regard to their reaction and civil behavior. Compared with the results of tests of various countries, our children exhibit a lower level of civil education, but other factors influence this result, which are not object of this paper. The results have changed within countries and also in international comparisons: 4 countries have averaged 14 countries did
- 214. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 200 better than average, while 18 countries have achieved under average scores. Finnish students have achieved the highest scores, followed by the Danes, Swedes, Estonians and Germans. Students from the Scandinavian countries have a high level of civil knowledge: in Sweden, for example, 4% of students have completed a high level of assessment and in four countries with the lowest score students can achieve only 70% of the average results. Most countries can be set at the level of proficiency in 2-level scale of achievement III built by researchers. It is also clear from the data that the girls have achieved significantly higher results compared with boys in 31 countries. Factors that affect students in their performance are: Parents’ characteristics The level of education Employment Socio-economic circumstances Position in the social hierarchy Among the numerous factors that have affected the consolidation of education and civil engagement are the urban population movements, values and cultures, unemployment, career demands and ambitions, the high number of divorces and immigrant parents. An important issue during the transition period has been the cooperation among policymakers and civil education programs and teachers, parents, community and civil society. Also, the lack of a national state standard as well as the lack of financial support for the implementation of programs of civil education. In this regard the support for equal engagement and education of girls in public life as a necessary process of a democratic society has been missing. The weakness of the system of state qualification of the teachers for teaching democratic citizenship has been a crucial issue. Meanwhile, the support of the state institutions to support educational institutions in terms of creating civil facilities has been missing. Another crucial concern was also the insufficient government involvement of students in school and community life. 4. Conclusions Education is the main instrument of society, through which social change cannot be achieved. It is linked to a particular social context, which should be seen as an individual right, where individuals have the opportunity to improve their social welfare and even the social change through the civic education of children first.
- 215. Brikena Dhuli andKseanela Sotirofski / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 201 References Anderson, R. (2002). Reforming science teaching: What research says about inquiry. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 13(1) Ashley, M. & Lee, J. (2003).Women Teaching Boys: Caring and working in the primary school. Trentham, Stoke-on-Trent Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. 35, No.4, July 1969, pp. 216-224 Bejtja, P. (2003). Të nxënët në shoqërinë e sotme. www.arsimi.gov.al/files/userfiles/.../Revista_nr_7.pdf, retrieved 13.04.2015 Bruner, J. (2003). Kultura e edukimit. ISP. Tiranë Drafti i propozimit të arsimit për të gjithë/iniciativa përshpejtuese (efa/fti) Ministria e Arsimit dhe e Shkencës. Projekti i Bankës Botërore për Sektorin e Arsimit. Kredia 3343-ALB Projekti i Reformës në Arsim. Maj 2004. International Education Journal, ERC2004 Special Issue, 2005, 5(5), 166-177.ISSN 1443-1475 © 2005 Shannon Research Press. http://iej.cjb.net 166 NAS. (2004). How people learn. (National Academi Press. Washigton. DC, 2004) Neuroscience Third Edition 2004 by Sinauer Associates, Inc.Sunderland, Massachusetts U.S.A, Brain Size and Intelligence. Victoria University.( 2011). Relationships on the Academic Performance of Children Aged 10-12 Years. http://www.sacmeq.org and http://www.unesco.org/iiep, retrieved 09.04.2015
- 216. Burcu Nur Binbuğa/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 202 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Examining Pro-Kurdish Political Parties From Women’s Representation Burcu Nur Binbuğa* Middle East Technical University, Department of Political Science, Turkey Abstract In this study, I want to examine how pro-Kurdish political parties became an arena for women’s participation in political decisions and women’s visibility in public sphere. Although examining gender equality in terms of political representation does not show the whole picture, representation of women in political parties is an important indicator to monitor gender equality and women activism in public sphere. In this framework, approaches of pro- Kurdish political parties on gender equality and representation of women in elections are worth to debating. In this study, I argue that there is a reciprocal relationship between women policies of political parties and participation of women into politics. Since 2000s, problems of gender discrimination and women representation gained importance in party programs of pro-Kurdish parties. In parallel with the changes in attitudes of parties, participation of women in political parties has increased and women have become more visible in public sphere. In order to increase women participation, two tools have been used; positive discrimination and co-chairpersonship. Gender inequality is described as the structural inequality and positive discrimination is applied in favour of women; it is used as a gender specific. As a part of positive discrimination in favour of women, women quota has been applied. To ensure equal political representation of women and men, co-chairpersonship in party leadership was firstly adopted and then chairpersonship both in party leadership and in local governments was applied. Structural arrangements, namely positive discrimination in favour of women and co- chairpersonship, enable to increase women representation both in the parliament and in local governments and serve the purpose of participation of women into politics and increasing women representation in politics. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women’s representation, pro-Kurdish political parties, gender equality, positive discrimination * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +090-312-270-20-77 E-mail address: burcunur@metu.edu.tr
- 217. Burcu Nur Binbuğa/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 203 1. Introduction In this study, I want to examine how pro-Kurdish political parties became an arena for women’s participation in political decisions and women’s visibility in public sphere. Although examining gender equality in terms of political representation does not show the whole picture, representation of women in political parties is an important indicator to monitor gender equality and women activism in public sphere. In this framework, approaches of pro- Kurdish political parties on gender equality and representation of women in local general elections is debated. By pro- Kurdish political parties, I mean political parties oriented towards the solution of Kurdish problem starting from HEP (People’s Labour Party), to HDP (People’s Democratic Party). In this study, I argue that structural arrangements, such as positive discrimination of women, women quota and co-chairpersonship, enable to increase women representation both in the parliament and in local governments. Since 1990s, Kurdish women have been politicized around political demands and gender equality in Turkey. In late 1980s and 1990s, Kurdish women became visible in public sphere as political actors. Although in the early period of movements, demands on Kurdish identity were dominant, especially after late 1990s, they have also mobilized around the struggle against patriarchal system; they aim to transform social relations in their own community (Çağlayan, 2010). Women in Kurdish movements do not only have symbolic place; instead, they are in a position of decision maker, they have occupied higher positions in party hierarchy. In this respect, politically active women have emerged from the most disadvantage part of the country. 2. The approaches of pro-kurdish political parties to gender equality An attempt to establish the party, which contributes to solving Kurdish problem in Turkey, started in 1990 with formulation of HEP (People’s Labour Party). In the general election in 1991, HEP cooperated with SHP (Social Democratic Populist Party) and 18 HEP candidates achieved to enter the parliament1 . HEP was closed by Constitutional Court in 1993 and DEP (Democracy Party) was established as a follower of HEP. The main objectives of this party was to democratize the state and society (Güneş, 2013: 302). Until late 1990s, gender equality was evaluated as secondary problem. These parties were oriented towards solution to Kurdish problem. Gender inequality was evaluated under social policy heading superficially in party programs of HEP and DEP. There was no specific reference to the problems of women and they were not considered as an addressed section of the society. In this period, there is also no women branches of HEP and DEP. After DEP was dissolved, HADEP (People’s Democracy Party) was established and this party was active until 2003. Recognizing Kurdish identity by the state and solving Kurdish problem through negotiation were main objects of this party. (Güneş, 2013: 307). HADEP’s part program shows similarities between former ones. Party programs and by laws of these parties did not directly emphasize on gender equality; rather, they focus on solution to Kurdish problem and violations of human rights. It is seen related to the political conjuncture of Turkey. In 1990s, there was intensively human rights violations lead by the state of emergency. Forced disappearances, violence against civil citizens, threat of party closure were widespread in 1990s. Therefore, Kurdish parties attempted to protect themselves, instead of developing a new discourse. 1 Available from http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25029246/; accessed 06.01.2014
- 218. Burcu Nur Binbuğa/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 204 In 2000s, there was a more democratic and free atmosphere in Turkey with compared to 1990s. This process also played a role in increasing women participation and mobilization in political parties. This process was reflected on parties’ changing attitude towards gender problem. In HADEP’s congress taken place in 2000, women and youth branches were defined as independent bodies having right to choose their own administration. More importantly, in its bylaw, positive discrimination towards women was accepted. In parallel, 25% women quota was accepted to increase participation of women in decision making and administration bodies, which assumes that 25% of all members, at least, should be women in all levels of party administration. This is the turning point for women representation because following parties accepted women quota and it has been increased in time. Positive discrimination towards women including quota is accepted by DEHAP (Democratic People’s Party) which was established in 2004 as a follower of HADEP. According to party program of DEHAP, there are 3 main conflicts in our current societies, the conflict between the dominated class and humanity, gender conflict and conflict between nature and human (DEHAP, 2003: 9-10). This period can be seen as a critical point in terms of approaching gender equality. According to its party program, gender conflict is one of the three basic contradictions. It can be seen that gender equality is focused in detail when compared to former party programs and it is much more radical when compared to previous parties’ attitudes towards gender equality. According to party program, the problems that individuals suffer today are based exclusion of women from the history. Indeed, women representation is evaluated as a precondition for democracy so it aims to increase women representation by the help of positive discrimination. As mentioned, 25% women quota was adopted by HADEP, DEHAP accepted 35 % women quota in its program (DEHAP, 2003: 77). Moreover, DEHAP attempts to regulate conducts of party members not only in public sphere, but also in private sphere (Çağlayan, 2010: 138). A member of party who resorts to violence against women or who has in polygamy relations commits a disciplinary action (2003: 138). Although action of closing of DEHAP did not end, DTP (Democratic Society Party) was established in 2005. DTP put emphasis on pluralistic and participative democracy, and, it made an effort to recognize collective rights of Kurds and extend authority of local governments, increases the participation of women into politics and struggles against ecologic destruction, unemployment and precarity (Ersanlı&Özdogan, 2012: 34). DTP was established relatively more democratic atmosphere and it aimed to appeal all part of Turkey. DTP follows DEHAP’s approach on gender equality. In DTP party program, women are represented as basic dynamics of democratization; it is suggested that without women freedom and gender equality, democracy is not possible (Güneş, 2013: 316). DTP also maintains women quota. It increases women quota to 40% which means in all levels of party administration and candidates selections, at least, forty percent should be women. DTP also adopted co- chairpersonship in party administration. After DTP was closed in 2009, BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) was established. 30 candidates supporting by BDP were elected in 2011 general elections. After this time, there emerged a visible attempt to cooperate with different part of the society; especially with leftist movement. BDP defines itself as a “democratic, libertarian, egalitarian, leftist mass party” and emphasizes on the concepts such as equality, justice, peace, differences. It adopts grassroot organization, stresses gender equality and ecologic society. From its perspective, women are essential dynamic for democratization. To actualize democratic ideals, there is a need to participation of women into politics. BDP aims to increase women participation by two ways: positive discrimination including women quota and co-chairpersonship. According to BDP program, positive discrimination towards women and young will be guaranteed by constitution until the equality is
- 219. Burcu Nur Binbuğa/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 205 realized (BDP: 4). With reference to this statement, it can be suggested that positive discrimination is not also fixed arrangement because it is supposed that gender inequality characterizes today’s society; however, when the equality between men and women realizes, the need for positive discrimination towards women will be removed. BDP applies 40% women quota in all levels of the party administration. In its program, BDP aims to object to patriarch not only in public sphere, but also in private sphere. It is stated in the party program that they struggle against value judgments which regards women inferior and against practices such as get married under 18 years, bride price, polygamy and bride exchange (2009:14). In its by law, it is also indicated that a party member who get married more than once is excluded from the party (2009. 4). Another tool used by BDP to increase women participation into politics is co-chairpersonship. As stated BDP bylaw, BDP struggle for abolishing obstacles to gender equality, it also intends to take measures to actualize gender equality in political realm. Co-chairpersonship is seen as a mean to actualize the equality between women and men. BDP also supports the organization of women as an independent branch within party formation. Each of the women who are the member of the party is also member of women committee. Independent woman branch within the party is important because women branch has an autonomous power in party administration. For example, they select women a deputy, candidates and co-chairpersons for local elections and party administration is supposed to conform to their decisions. Emphasis on democratization, constitutional reform and resolving Kurdish problem through dialogue are common characteristics of Kurdish political parties. However, especially, by the establishment of DTP in 2005, there is an attempt to apply more universalistic values, such as ecology, precarity, grassroots democracy, and address different parts of the society, such as women, young, workers. Since 2000s, the problems of women, young, ecologies, employees have added to party programs. 3. Representation of women in general and local elections Kurds’ experience in the parliament started in 1991 by the election of 21 deputies through alliance between SHP. Among them, Leyla Zana was the only woman deputy, who became the symbol of Kurdish struggle. After 13 years, they enter to the parliament, in 2007 general elections, 8 female DTP deputies among 22 parliamentarians were elected to the parliament. In 2011 elections 11 female deputies among 36 representatives were elected. In the last election in January 2015, 80 HDP candidates entered the parliament with 32 female representatives. In 2015 general election, 97 women entered the Parliament and percentage of women in Parliament raised from 14.3% to 17.6%. HDP is now the party with the highest representation of women in the Parliament-around 40 %-, compared to the 16% women CHP, the 15.5% woman AKP and the 5% woman MHP. While this will be the first time in history that women have achieved this level of representation in the Parliament, it is still too low to talk about equal political representation. Local election also presents the clues to evaluate women’s activism in politics. Between 1930 and 2009, 6 women provincial mayors was elected according to statistics of KADER (The Association for the Support and Training of Women Candidates)2 . Among 6 women provincial mayors, 2 of them were elected from DTP in 2004 and 200o local elections in Tunceli municipality. Moreover, 9 women DTP candidates were elected in 2004 local elections. In 2009 local election, BDP has 13 women mayors3 . In 2014 local election, 2 Available from http://cms2.ka-der.org.tr/images/file/635106274588385879.pdf; accesed 08.01.2014 3 Available from http://cms2.ka-der.org.tr/images/file/635106274588385879.pdf; accessed 10.01.2014
- 220. Burcu Nur Binbuğa/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 206 BDP announced 32 female candidates for 2014 local elections4 . 23 women mayors including Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality were elected. Moreover, apart from these, 46 female candidates were elected as co- chairperson in some provinces where there is no women candidate5 . In addition to applying co-chairpersonship, the important point for the process of candidate determination is that women candidates are selected by women branch of the party and they are candidates in cities or districts where they can be elected6 . 4. Conclusion It is possible to suggest that there is a reciprocal relationship between women policies of political parties and participation of women into politics. Since 2000s, problems of gender discrimination and women representation gained importance. In parallel with the changes in attitudes of parties, participation of women in political parties has increased and women have become more visible in public sphere. The statement in HADEP’s party program which regards gender inequality as one of the basic conflicts in society is the starting point for women conscious policies. After this period, inequality between women and men has been regarded as the oldest inequality and establishing equal relationship between women and men have been mentioned to solve other problems in current societies. Women have been seen as a main dynamic for democratization. In order to increase women participation, two tools have been used; positive discrimination and co-chairpersonship. Gender inequality is described as the structural inequality and positive discrimination is applied in favour of women; it is used as a gender specific. As a part of positive discrimination in favour of women, women quota has been applied. 25% women quota was adopted by HADEP, it has been increased in time; HDP exercises 40% women quota today. To ensure equal political representation of women and men, co-chairpersonship in party leadership was firstly adopted and then chairpersonship both in party leadership and in local governments was applied. Structural arrangements, namely positive discrimination in favour of women and co- chairpersonship, enable to increase women representation both in the parliament and in local governments and serve the purpose of participation of women into politics and increasing women representation in politics. 4 Available from http://bianet.org/bianet/siyaset/152307-bdp-den-32-belediyeye-kadin-aday, http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/bdp_kadin_adaylarini_acikladi-1167822 http://www.bdp.org.tr/tr/?page_id=13; accessed 10.01.2014 5 Available from http://bianet.org/bianet/siyaset/152307-bdp-den-32-belediyeye-kadin-aday or http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/bdp_kadin_adaylarini_acikladi-1167822 http://www.bdp.org.tr/tr/?page_id=13; accessed 10.01.2014 6 Available from http://sosyalistfeministkolektif.org/guencel/778-dokh-feminist-yontemler.html; accessed 10.01.2014
- 221. Burcu Nur Binbuğa/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 207 References Çağlayan Handan, 2010, Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar, İletişim: İstanbul Güneş Cengiz, 2013, Türkiye’de Kürt Ulusal Hareketi, Dipnot: İstanbul Party Programs and Bylaws Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, Program, Internet.Available from http://bdp.org.tr/devam/17-bdp- program.aspx; accessed 09.01.2014 Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, Tüzük, Internet.Available from http://www.bdp.org.tr/devam/16-bdp- tuzuk.aspx; accessed 09.01.2014 Demokrasi Partisi (DEP), Program, Undefined Place and Time of Publication, in Güneş C. 2013, Türkiye’de Kürt Ulusal Hareketi, Dipnot: İstanbul & in Çağlayan H., 2010, Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar, İletişim: İstanbul Demokratik Toplum Partisi, 2007, Program, . Internet. Available from http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/eyayin/GAZETELER/WEB/KUTUPHANEDE%20BULUNAN%20DIJITAL% 20KAYNAKLAR/KITAPLAR/SIYASI%20PARTI%20YAYINLARI/200707129%20DTP%20PROGR AM%20VE%20TUZUGU%202005/200707129%20DTP%20PROGRAM%20VE%20TUZUGU%20200 5%200000_0000%20ICINDEKILER.pdf; accessed 09.01.2014 Demokratik Halk Partisi (DEHAP), 2003, Program ve Tüzük. Internet. Available from http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/eyayin/GAZETELER/WEB/KUTUPHANEDE%20BULUNAN%20DIJITAL% 20KAYNAKLAR/KITAPLAR/SIYASI%20PARTI%20YAYINLARI/200707309%20DEHAP%20PRO GRAM%20VE%20TUZUK%202003/200707309%20DEHAP%20PROGRAM%20VE%20TUZUK%20 2003.pdf;accessed 09.01.2014 Halkın Emek Partisi, Program, Undefined Place and Time of Publication, in Güneş C. 2013, Türkiye’de Kürt Ulusal Hareketi, Dipnot: İstanbul & in Çağlayan H.,2010, Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar, İletişim: İstanbul Halkın Demokrasi Partisi (HADEP), 1994, Program. Internet. Available from http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/eyayin/GAZETELER/WEB/KUTUPHANEDE%20BULUNAN%20DIJITAL% 20KAYNAKLAR/KITAPLAR/SIYASI%20PARTI%20YAYINLARI/199600970%20HADEP%20PRO GRAM%201994/199600970%20HADEP%20PROGRAM%201994.pdf; accessed 09.01.2014
- 222. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 208 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Masculine Performatives of Female Body: Queering the Hegemonic? Canan Şahin* Middle East Technical University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Turkey Abstract This paper will focus on the potential subversiveness of butch and transgender masculinities as a distinct gender variance. The paper will argue that lesbian, queer or transgender masculinities call into question the biology-gender correlation, whereby challenging the hegemonic forms of masculinity assumed to be inscribed on male body. Following Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin and Judith Halberstam’s theoretical framework, the paper will trace how female and transgender masculinities are constructed, eroticized, politicized and performed. The major concern of the paper will be whether alternative masculine performatives acted out by female and transgeneder bodies challenge or reproduce the hegemonic forms of masculinity. The debate within the lesbian, transgender and feminist movement will be revisited and its repercussions in Turkey will be explored. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Female masculinity, butch, transgender, queer, hegemony, performativity, subversiveness * Corresponding Author. Tel:+090 507 454 87 07 E-mail address: sacanan@metu.edu.tr
- 223. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 209 1. Introduction This paper draws on new perspectives on female masculinity to account for the performance and politics of butch and transgender as to how they can queer, subvert and transmute patriarchal and heteronormative gender order and construction of hegemonic masculinity. The political potential of butch and transgender in both their defiance of patriarchal constructs of femininity and their transformation of masculinity will be interrogated through a critical overview of the literature on female masculinity and transgender. This paper will use this theoretical background in the analysis of female and transgender masculinity in Turkey. The responses elicited through a written interview with three butch and three transgender LGBTI activists will be incorporated into the discussion of the phenomenon of transgender and butch masculinity to explore the debates and perspectives among the activists in Turkey. 2. Conceptual Framework 2.1. Butch and Transgender One of the broadest definitions of butch was offered by Gayle Rubin (1992) in her article “Of Catamites and Kings: Reflections on Butch, Gender and Boundaries”: Butch is the lesbian vernacular term for women who are more comfortable with masculine gender codes, styles, or identities than with feminine ones. The term encompasses individuals with a broad range of investments in “masculinity.” It includes women who are not at all interested in male gender identities, but who use traits associated with masculinity to signal their lesbianism or to communicate their desire to engage in the kinds of active or initiatory sexual behaviors that in this society are allowed or expected from men. It includes women who adopt “male” fashions and mannerisms as a way to claim privileges or deference usually reserved for men. It may include women who find men’s clothing better made, and those who consider women’s usual wear too confining or uncomfortable or who feel it leaves them vulnerable or exposed. (472) In the same decade as Rubin, lesbian and transgender communities were in an increasing effort to develop a radical politics of sexuality and gender. Butler (1990), Bolin (1994), Califia (1997), Boswell (1997), Halberstam (1998) and Maltz (1998) challenged the normative categories of man and woman and denounced unconditional adjustment to society. Transgression of gender duality became central to the radical theory of politics of sexuality, giving rise to a variety of embodiments of masculinity within lesbian and transgender circles. Wickman argues that female-bodied persons were increasingly provided with performative means to enact masculinity in visible and recognizable ways, resulting in queerization of the link between gender and body (2001: 47). From this background, an umbrella term ‘transgender’ emerged as a loose category deployed by those who would define themselves as gender benders, gender blenders, genderqueers or bigenders (Feinberg, 1996). This paper treats butch and transgender as permeable categories. Judith Halberstam (1998) in her book Female Masculinity argues that female masculinity ‘overlaps’ with transgender, which is “an umbrella term for cross-identifying subjects” (Halberstam, 1998: 14-15). Tough/Strong woman, the tomboy, the butch lesbian, the drag king, the stone butch, the FTMs are all considered as manifestations of female masculinity in Halberstam’s comprehensive analysis. Such an inclusive terminology and broad definition did not prevent the concept of “female masculinity” being contested, though. Therefore, in order not to disregard the debate carried out around borders separating one identity or label from others, this paper will make use of both nominations in its analysis: butch for lesbians who enact masculinity and transgender for those
- 224. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 210 whose masculine enactment problematizes the category of woman but do not feel comfortable in the category of man either. 2.2. Debate within the Movement While a significant body of literature saw the increasing interest in butch and transgender as a negative development, others interpreted this trend as a sign of growing radicalism in sexual politics. To illustrate the first category of responses, Penelope (1993: 18) saw the renewed interest in butch as “lesbian manifestation of the contemporary right-wing backlash”. Jeffreys (1989: 160) saw it as a “dangerous development for lesbians”. Not only butch masculinity but also femmes, commonly conceived as an inseparable part of butch dominated erotic system, have been attacked on the grounds that they were upholding patriarchal practices of femininity. Radical and lesbian feminism problematized masculinity in a totalistic fashion (Nguyen 667) since masculinity has been seen as “a sign, a reward and an instrument of men’s power” (Gardiner, 2002), and as the crucial core of the continuation of male hegemony and women’s oppression. Gardiner (2002) wrote that masculine behavior, masculine roles, and masculine beings were an obstacle to women’s liberation. Butch women were seen as “pseudo-men” and their masculine behavior, dressing and treatment of women were seen “an even more insidious threat to the lesbian feminist community [since they were seen as] the enemy within” (Love, 2000:106). Jeffreys (1989: 169) called stone-butch a form of “internalized lesbophobia” accusing the stone-butch of rejecting or denying oneself as female and thus a lesbian. However, not all responses were negative. On the contrary, there was a growing body of literature drawing attention to the subversive potential of female masculinity. 2.3. Queer Responses: Butler, Rubin and Halberstam It is possible to view female masculinity as a specific gender rather than mimicry only if perception of gender and sexuality is based on non-naturalist and non-essentialist theorization. In Gender Trouble (1990), Butler asserts that there is no ontological status that the body retains as a pre-given materiality onto which gender is inscribed. She also contends that acts, gestures and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance (Butler, 1990: 173-174). Such an understanding breaks the assumingly natural link between the body as surface and gender as its cultural expression, which is usually presented as a relation of naturally determined causality. Rubin’s “Thinking Sex” (1984) had already paved the way for a socially constructivist perspective of radical sexuality politics: The new scholarship on sexual behaviour has given sex a history and created a constructivist alternative to sexual essentialism. Underlying this body of work is an assumption that sexuality is constituted in society and history, not biologically ordained. This does not mean the biological capacities are not prerequisites for human sexuality. It does mean that human sexuality is not comprehensible in purely biological terms. Human organisms with human brains are necessary for human cultures, but no examination of the body or its parts can explain the nature and variety of human social systems. The belly’s hunger gives no clues as to the complexities of cuisine. The body, the brain, the genitalia, and the capacity for language are necessary for human sexuality. But they do not determine its content, its experiences, or its institutional forms (Rubin, 1984: 149). Drawing on Rubin’s non-essentialist view and Butler’s account of performative gender with a slightly nuanced correction, Halberstam provided the first book-length study of female masculinity in its most inclusive term. Historical and literary representations of female masculinity and transgender were featured
- 225. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 211 in her book titled Female Masculinity (1998). Halberstam argued that masculinity studies mainly focus on men and the variances within male masculinity despite their emphasis on plurality of masculinities in the literature. She refused to situate female and transgender masculinity within this field of study and instead offered an account of female masculinity arguing that it constitutes a specific form of gender variance and sexual dissidence. In Halberstam’s view, unlike hegemonic masculinity practices, which have investments in political, sexual and social superiority, female masculinity is a powerful “style”. That is, it does not invest in social dominance (Halberstam 1998: 15). 3. Written Interview, Responses and Their Analysis To relate the international debate to Turkish context, a written interview was conducted with three butch (Selen, Gülden, Esra) and three transgender individuals (Berk, Ozan, Sinan). The rest of the paper will incorporate some of the responses elicited from the respondents into the debate around female masculinity. One of the issues interrogated in the interview was concerned with whether heterosexual female masculinity is treated differently from female masculinity. Selen (Butch) responded pointing to the importance of institutions of sexuality. She said: You can be one of ‘them’ when you are heterosexual even if you are masculine. You can form relationships in conformity with the norms and have children for example. You can even gain some privilege in your social relations and work life thanks to your tough image and being “like a man”. On the other hand, this does not apply to lesbian or trans individuals because they threaten the societal structure by threatening the institution of family. As long as a female with masculine discursive or corporeal signs desires man, her masculinity is not seen as rebellious as that of a butch or transgender. Connell (1995) argues that hegemonic masculinity cannot function without institutional power. State, law, companies, trade unions, heterosexual family, national army all incorporate homophobic and heterosexist values into economic and public activities, rendering the former desirable. If a masculine female has heterosexual desire, hegemonic masculinity does not find her threatening enough to the binary gender system it is built on. Understanding how hegemonic masculinities are constructed might help understand how butch or transgender masculinity is not constructed, which is another important point of discussion. Basically, trying to answer the question how butch/transgender masculinity differs from that of hegemonic masculinity might be of importance if female masculinity is to be figured outside relations of social dominance. Halberstam stresses that male masculinity is embedded in social institutions and practices like the state, the military and so on. Unlike male masculinity, she argues, female masculinity is more small-scale, an individual mode of being (Halberstam 1998: 15). When asked about whether female masculinity threatens hegemonic masculinity or not, Sinan (transgender) said: ….hegemonic masculinity is based on heterosexism which is based on a differentiation of sex, sexuality and gender roles along the lines of categories of male and female. Male masculinity and female femininity are the cornerstones of hegemonic heterosexual matrix and therefore female and transgender masculinity transgresses the rigidly drawn borders. Butler, while exploring how agency is possible in this rigidly defined heterosexual matrix, argues that the dichotomous relation between binary gender roles is both subverted and queered through butch and transgender performatives (Butler, 1990: 179). In other words, the existence of butch demonstrates that
- 226. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 212 there is a flaw in this regulatory system. It haunts the heterogender creating a fear that one day it will be discovered to actually lack the original that it is claiming the approximate. Selen (butch) says that hegemonic masculinity feels panicked when it sees something that does not fit into the categories. Female masculinity is received with confusion and disturbance. Gülden (butch), on the other hand, doubts whether female masculinity is subversive or not since she believes that hegemonic structures feeds into the masculinity of butch or transgender from birth through mechanisms of cultural conditioning. Therefore, she argues, one should always find ways to differentiate her/his masculinity from the codes of hegemonic masculinity to attain a threatening status. Gülden’s concern is addressed in Crowder’s (1998) article titled “Lesbian and the (Re/De)Construction of the Female Body” in which she argues that the (non-femme) lesbian has recreated the female body. Crowder asserts “if the conventionally feminine or even female body is unlivable and the masculine body unthinkable, then lesbians must recreate the body… to transcend the categories of “masculine” and “feminine””(1998: 57). Rubin makes a similar point when she argues that the category of butch/transgender constitutes her gender identity “through the deployment and manipulation of masculine codes of gender” (Rubin 1992: 467). Gülden (Butch) adds that there is conflict built around the lack of phallus. She says since female/transgender masculinity performs masculinity without a penis, their masculinity is humiliated. Berk (trans) makes a similar point when he says: Hegemonic masculinity is based on the view that masculine power is naturally earned with the existence of penis. Cisgender men might develop a sense of competition and rage towards masculine females or transgenders thinking that they do not deserve to be masculine with such a lack. Such discourse usually stems from an essentialist view and focuses on penis as the ultimate signifier of being male. Judith Butler (1993) has argued that the phallus is basically transferable. Theoreticians who argued against this argument have claimed that lesbian sexuality exists outside of “the phallogocentric economy” (Nyugen 678). Yet, Butler stresses that despite the fact that lesbian sexuality might not be primarily constructed around the phallus, lesbian interactions can potentially displace it. Through a different symbolization and signification, “the lesbian phallus offers the occasion (or set of occasions) for the phallus to signify differently, and in so signifying, to resignify, unwittingly, its own masculinity and heterosexist privilege” (Butler, 1993: 90). By removing the phallus from masculine heterosexuality and recirculating and resignifying it within the context of lesbian relations it “deploys the phallus to break the signifying chain in which it conventionally operates” (Butler, 1993: 88). The issue of lesbian phallus is often referred to in the debate centered on whether butch-femme erotic system is mimicry of the heterosexual one. In Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic, Case (1989) stresses that butch-femme couples should not be seen as victims of the hegemonic heterosexist system. They, Case argues, constantly “seduce the sign system through flirtation and inconsistency” (1989: 283). Faderman (1992) stresses that butch-femme erotic system does not operate on ‘being’. Rather, it is based on ‘playing’. As a result, butch-femme couple perverts the signs of heterosexuality and as Butler argues reproduces them in a ‘wrong’ way. Butch-femme creates a space where heterosexuality is “recoded, transformed, duped and parodied” (Harris, 2002: 75). In butch-femme erotic system, sexual roles are not necessarily butch- dominated. This hybridity or not being able to be contained in fixed categories of gender means that masculinity is an inadequate measure of butch as Levitt and Hiestand states (2004:612). Sedgwick (1995) suggests an understanding of female masculinity from an ‘n’ dimensional perspective rather than two- dimensional conceptualization of sex and gender. Jalas (2005) contributes to this discussion by reminding the limitedness of butch-femme erotic system to understand female masculinity. Butches can be “tops”,
- 227. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 213 “bottoms” or “switch”. Butch and transgender are multiple in their sexuality and also performatives of masculinity in interactions. Sinan (trans) argues that dominance in sexuality is not related with masculinity only: There are femme dominatrix relations derived from BDSM. In addition, he maintains, dominance in sexuality that is based on mutual consent cannot be easily seen as a continuation of systemic and systematic dominations that we witness in social life. Bedroom cannot be simply seen as an extension of social life. Although butch-femme erotic style can be read as a resignification and parody of heterosexuality, it might not be totally deprived of a misogynist practices or discourse. The respondents of the interview cautioned against the sexist/misogynist potential that butch or transgender masculinities might have. Esra (butch) cautions: …in romantic or social relations some lesbians or transgenders can easily role-play relations that are identical to heterosexual family relations. To be more specific, if masculinity is performed with attributes such as aggression, controlling other’s behavior, sexist masculine vernacular, binary gender roles, it reinforces the hegemonic masculinity rather than subverting it. Ozan (trans) also stresses that some trans men feel successful based on their proximity to the male model in their mind (size of the penis for example). He asks, “Are you going to take the hegemonic masculinity as a role model or are you going to construct a new masculinity yourself?” Halberstam suggests that it is essential to think carefully about what kinds of masculine beings we become. She maintains that alternative masculinities will fail to change existing gender hierarchies to the extent to which they fail to be feminist, antiracist and queer (Halberstam, 1998: 173). In the same line with this discussion, in the interview, respondents were asked whether it is possible to think of masculinity only as an aesthetic erotic style deprived of its relation to power and hegemony. Sinan (trans) responded to this question arguing that as long as we remain to live in a male-dominated world, masculinity will be positioned over femininity in political and hierarchical terms. Feminism, he argued, allows us to conceive masculinity and femininity outside power relations. Yet, when masculinity practices in social life are considered, it gets complicated. He suggests, “If it is feminism that challenges the hierarchical gender system, masculinity can only get divorced from sexism by becoming feminist. The world needs a feminist revolution”. Selen (butch) argues that masculinity is situated over femininity in society, but she also thinks: …female masculinity or transgender masculinity is not born out of an aspiration to this superiority. Especially, female masculinity is at a point that can subvert this hierarchy. Therefore, butches and transgenders, I believe, are better at forming relationships based on equality. Masculinity is not used as an attribute of superiority in these relationships. Therefore, butches and trans men perform masculinity in a more aesthetic and erotic fashion rather than for concerns of power and hegemony. Ozan (trans) states that his masculinity is more of an aesthetic and erotic style rather than an aspiration to power. He believes that a masculinity divorced from sexism is possible as long as one questions the hegemonic masculinity. Trans men, he says, usually refashion masculinity as their own creation. Gülden (butch) says that masculinity is both an aesthetic/erotic style as well as a gender position situated over femininity. She also finds it possible to dissociate masculinity from power and sexism. Yet, her suggestion is not building a masculinity divorced from sexism. She suggests a queer position which disagrees not only with the politically dominant masculinity but also with the accepted norms of aesthetics and erotic.
- 228. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 214 Esra (butch) asserts that masculinity can mostly be read from the surface. Being tough, wearing loose clothes, not being obsessed with bodily hair, more guiding in the determination of sexual positions, being more decisive in the formation and termination of relationship are usually related with what we corporeally enact. Yet, in daily life and his/her self-perception, s/he can be fragile, sensitive, meticulous, forgiving etc. Setting a hierarchy can be misleading here. She believes that masculinity as an orientation/variance can queer the hegemonic and construct an alternative masculinity. Esra here refers to a kind of hybridity where masculinity is performed in a tension with what is perceived to be feminine. This transmutation might have subversive impacts on hegemonic heterosexual matrix. Berk (trans) argues that neither masculinity nor femininity can be confined to the realm of aesthetics or erotic. Patriarchy keeps femininity at an inferior position. Yet, this does not mean that trans men or butches prefer masculinity to be superior. He maintains: I consider myself “different and equal” and try to live in that line. In an ideal society, where gender equality is constituted, I believe, masculine discourse will also be altered. And masculinity will not leave any space for sexism to flourish. But thinking that hegemonic masculinity is queered by female or trans masculinity is not so true. No matter what kind of masculinity is performed (male, female, cisgender, trans), it is somehow a projection of the binary gender system which we live in. Each masculinity has to launch an inner fight to get rid of the hegemonic. Although Halberstam (1998) argues that female masculinity escapes the social engagements of male masculinity, it might not be able to operate totally outside the heterosexual matrix. Nyugen, in her article on female masculinity answers this question arguing that: ….the enactment of butch transforms, transmutes, activates, and engages with the body and the experience of bodily existence in particular ways. Butch as a means of rendering the body intelligible as sexed and gendered involves the mobilization of masculinity in a dynamic tension with femininity and the female body (Nyugen 671). When respondents were asked whether there could be different masculinities enacted among butches and transgenders, especially in relation to hegemonic masculinity, Sinan (trans) said: Structural and cultural conditions (class, race, geography, sexuality etc) affect all masculinity performances, not only female or trans masculinity. It is these factors that make some performances hegemonic while rendering some non-hegemonic. To illustrate, being gentle or a bully, being an intellectual or not, having aesthetic concerns or not could be values that are adopted or rejected based on the conditions above. I am not sure whether the term ‘range’ can express this variety. To imagine a set of relations ranging from conformity to conflict, there must be a static and stable male masculinity that is used as criteria for the rest. Given the variety of masculinities shaped by culture and structural factors, it is hard to define such a stable identity. Sinan seems to historicize masculinity in its temporality. This is very much in line with what Butler suggests. She stresses that gender is not “a substantial model of identity. It is a constituted social temporality.” (Butler 1999: 179) The above mentioned linkages between butch/transgender individuals and anti-sexist, feminist or queer views are mostly related with opportunities available. Selen (butch) says that some butch and trans activists have the time and opportunity to discuss hegemonic male masculinity while others do not. She continues:
- 229. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 215 There is an organized group of activists and they form alliances and are in a constant debate against male masculinity. However, in small cities working class lesbians and trans men might live in conformity with hegemonic masculinity. This might even give them the chance to be accepted in society. Esra (butch) argues that performing masculinity differently from male masculinity increases the probability of conflict with hegemony. Yet, if there is little or no difference, this means that female/transgender masculinity is culturally absorbed into the hegemonic one. Berk (trans) makes a similar point. He also draws attention to the importance of survival in a country where non-conformism is immediately punished. He says, “The more one’s masculinity is rejected by the heterosexist system, the more she/he needs to enact masculinity in a conformist manner.” Butler (1993), in Bodies That Matter, argues: “A construction is not a kind of manipulable artifice” because the subject of gender “neither precedes nor follows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within and as the matrix of gender relations themselves” (1993: 7). Therefore, although female masculinity is a gender category which does not rest on the mimicry of an ‘original’ masculinity, it is surrounded by a heterosexist matrix of gender relations whereby femininity is regarded inferior. Therefore, on the one hand, butches or transgenders are outside the institutional power of hegemonic masculinity, which allow them to escape the link between maleness and power. Their masculinity is usually humiliated, pathologized and discriminated by the hegemonic masculinity. On the other hand, female and trans masculinity does not construct itself in a vacuum, therefore, it’s vulnerable to the pressure of hegemonic heterosexist ideology. Lastly, the interviewees were asked whether there is a policing within the LGBTI and feminist movement towards butches or transgenders to explore whether the debate outlined above had a resonance in Turkey. Ozan (trans) says that there is sometimes discrimination/exclusion in the movement. He argues that this results from failure to explore the other side sufficiently. He says “…for example, a trans woman comrade told me once “what is the point of transitioning, you don’t have a penis anyway”. But of course, not all trans women have the same attitude.” Gülden (butch) says that transgenders are discriminated more severly compared to butch lesbians in feminist groups. It is thought, she argues, transgenders cannot be part of a feminist struggle. Gülden thinks that this discrimination is based on an incorrect understanding of feminist politics. Berk (trans) responds to this question saying, “...a lot…it even exists in LGBTI organizations. Discrimination can occur based on accusations like being so much man, not being queer enough, being more acceptable etc.” Gülden (butch) says there is a double association in minds. Lesbianism is associated with masculinity and masculinity is associated with maleness. Berk (trans) argues that the feminist and LGBT movement fails to imagine masculinity beyond patriarchy. He says: Unlike femininity, female/trans masculinity is not seen as acceptable at all. While trans women are praised in their camp mode, trans men are denied the performances of masculinity. Their being macho/manly is not tolerated because it is not seen as a temporary performance usually aimed at compensating for the denial of their masculinity/manliness until that time. There is a kind of moral policing within some groups in the LGBTI and feminist movement that follows, judges and tells off. 4. Conclusion The butch lesbian and masculine transgender break the so-called natural connection between masculinity and men. Moreover, they denaturalize masculinity by making it seem “queer.” This is because the resignification of masculinity on the female body creates the space for masculinity to transmute and to embody new meanings and manifestations (Rubin, 1992). According to Whittle, that method of assault is “gender fucking” or “fucking gender”. This assault is comprised of “full-frontal theoretical and practical attack on the dimorphism of gender- and sex-roles” (Whittle, 1995: 202). Despite its widely recognized
- 230. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 216 subversive role, masculine performatives of butch and transgenders are sometimes associated with a desire to access male privilege in the literature and in the movement. Also, masculine performative is usually thought to be reproducing binary gender roles. Rubin answers this argument: Categories like “woman”, “lesbian,” or “transsexual” are all imperfect, historical, temporary, and arbitrary. We use them, and they use us. We use them to construct meaningful lives, and they mold us into historically specific forms of personhood. Instead of fighting for immaculate classifications and impenetrable boundaries, let us strive to maintain a community that understands diversity as a gift, sees anomalies as precious, and treats all basic principles with a hefty dose of skepticism (Rubin, 1992: 479). As Rubin suggests, LGBTI organizations and feminist movement need to develop a more inclusive understanding of gender and sexual liberation. To the extent that feminist theories confine the performatives into dichotomous categories without acknowledging its unique way of becoming, its conflictual residence and its tensions, they will fail to account for one of the most visible signification of lesbianism and most subversive performative for heterosexuality. From the interviews conducted with three butch and three trans individuals it can be concluded that there is a vibrant activism articulating its subversive potential with a significant degree of criticism of heterosexist system of gender, hegemonic masculinity and gender policing within the movement. References Bolin, A. (1994). Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy, and Diversity. In Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, ed. Gilbert Herdt, (pp. 447–85). New York: Zone. Boswell, H. (1997). The Transgender Paradigm Shift Toward Free Expression. In Bullough, Bonnie, Bullough, Vern L. and Elias, James (eds), Gender blending. Amherst: Prometheus Books. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. _________, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge. Califia, P. (1997). Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis. Case, S. (1989). Towards a Butch-femme Aesthetic. In L. Hart (Ed.), Making a spectacle:Feminist essays on contemporary women’s theatre (pp. 282–299). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. Los Angeles: California University Press. Crowder, D. G. (1998). Lesbians and the (re/de)construction of the female body. In Douglas, C. A. Love and politics: Radical feminist and lesbian theories. San Francisco: Ism Press. Faderman, L. (1992). The Return of Butch and Femme: A Phenomenon in Lesbian Sexuality of the 1980s and 1990s. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2(4), 578–596. Feinberg, L. 1996. Transgender warriors: Making a History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Boston: Beacon Press. Gardiner, J. K. (2002). Introduction. In J. K. Gardiner (Ed.), Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New directions, (pp. 1–29). New York: Columbia University Press. Halberstam, J. (1998). Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press. Jeffreys, S. (1989). Butch and Femme: Now and Then. In Lesbian History Group (Eds.), Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History 1840–1985. London: The Women’s Press.
- 231. Canan Şahin /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 217 Levitt, H. M., & Hiestand, R. (2004). A Quest for Authenticity: Contemporary Butch Gender. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 50(9–10), 605–622. Love, H. (2000). A Gentle Angry People: The lesbian Culture Wars. Transition, 9(4), 98–113. Maltz, R. (1998). Real butch: The Performance/performativity of Male impersonation, Drag kings, Passing as male, and Stone butch Realness. Journal of Gender Studies, 7(3), 273–286. Noble, J. B. (2002). Seeing Double, Thinking Twice: The Toronto Drag Kings and (Re-) Articulations of Masculinity. Journal of Homosexuality, 34(3–4), 251–162. Nguyen, A. (2008). Patriarchy, Power, and Female Masculinity, Journal of Homosexuality, 55:4, 665- 683. Penelope, J. (1993). Whose past are we reclaiming? off our backs, 23(8), 24–37. Rifkin, L. (2002). The suit suits whom?: Lesbian gender, female masculinity and women in-suits. In M. Gibson & D. T. Meem (Eds.), Femme/butch: New considerations of the way we want to go (pp. 157– 174). New York: Harrington Park Press. Rosenberg, J. (2003). Butler’s “lesbian phallus”: Or, what can deconstruction feel?. Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, 9(3), 393–414. Rubin, G. (1992). Of Catamites and Kings: Reflections on Butch, Gender, and Boundaries”, in J. Nestle (ed.) The Persistent Desire, pp. 466–83. Boston, MA: Alyson Publications. __________. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In Carole Vance (Ed), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (pp. 267-319). Boston: Routledge. Sedgwick, E. K. (1995). Gosh, Boy George, you must be awfully secure in your masculinity!. In M. Berger, B. Wallis, & S. Watson (Eds.), Constructing masculinity (pp. 45–60). New York: Routledge. Whittle, S. (1995). Gender fucking or fucking gender?: Current cultural contributions to theories of gender blending. In R. Ekins & D. King (Ed.), Blending genders: Social aspects of cross-dressing and sex-changing (pp. 196–214). New York: Routledge. Wickman, J. 2001. Transgender politics: The construction and deconstruction of binary gender in the Finnish transgender community. Turku:Abo Akademi University Press.
- 232. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 218 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Reproduction of Masculine Language Through Caps Çağrı Yılmaza* , Kübra Özdemirb a Anadolu University, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Turkey b Yüzüncü Yıl University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Turkey Abstract With the communication systems of the Internet technology having rapidly been improved in 2000s, it is obvious that communication has been evolved into a new dimension. Communication systems of the Internet technology exemplified as blogs and microblogs, social networking websites, news portals, video sharing websites, online encyclopedia and dictionaries, games etc. refer to “social media”. Each space of communal-everyday life has been occupied by social media which are believed to contribute much to the interactive communication. It is undeniable that broad participation of users in social media cannot be considered to be independent from the background of each user shaped by collective mentality, ways of thinking and use of everyday language, on one hand. On the other hand, it can also be claimed that social media could influence individual way of thinking, adoption of an attitude and acquisition of a positive or negative standard of judgment. In Turkey where masculinity is mostly expressed via femininity, everyday language dominated by patriarchal discourse is reproduced and brought into caps, a new and cynical form of visual and written medium of expression of social media. This study focuses on what masculine language tells the target audience through caps. We wish to offer a discursive and semiotic content analysis by random sampling upon how caps functions in the reproduction and reinforcement of masculine language so as to raise awareness of this process for the Internet users and contribute to the multidisciplinary studies. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Social media; social networks; image; femininity; masculine language; techno-humour; caps. * Corresponding Author. Tel: + 9-0539-261-03-35 E-mail address: cagri_yilmaz@anadolu.edu.tr
- 233. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 219 1. Introduction In the 21.century, the use of social media has dramatically increased. Undoubtedly, social media provide information either individually or collectively generated by content providers in rapid and various ways and deeply affect lives. Stereotypical discourses, point of views and attitudes reproduced through images that are generated in a given society play an important role in individual way of perceiving things. A hybrid and cynical form of visual and written medium of expression, works of caps have been popularized among Turkish social media users as the image of the Internet age in Turkey. However, visual fragments and supportive sentences which mutually complement each other and create a connotative language of caps can be claimed to reproduce discourses which degrade women’s status. Patriarchal system founded on social, political, economical, legal and cultural basis unsurprisingly creates a sphere of influence on media and means of communication. Caps, therefore, not only reflects the cultural elements of Turkish society they were born into but also serves as a sphere in which practices attributed to femininity by the masculine language are revealed. As patriarchy is “a long collective labour of socialization of the biological and biologicization of the social” (Bourdieu, 2014: 13), masculine hegemony is inevitably engraved in minds. Patriarchy as “a naturalized social construction” (Bourdieu, 2014: 14) interpenetrates discourses, acts and thoughts of a given society. It is present both – in the objectified state - in things (in the house, for example, every part of which is 'sexed'), in the whole social world, and in the embodied state in the habitus of the agents, functioning as systems of schemes of perception, thought and action (Bourdieu, 2014: 21). This article is offered in the belief that social networks also harbor stereotypical representations of gender roles. To demonstrate it, caps is introduced as a “digital image” and popular means of social networks to reproduce gender stereotypes of patriarchy and gender roles attributed to women. In this regard, through caps, the status of women is analyzed and the critique of caps is put upon a theoretical basis and dealt with a discursive and semiotic content analysis. Visual materials are selected out of innumerable works of caps from “incicaps.com” by random sampling. 2. Social Media, Social Networks and Gender Social network has become the primary medium of communication in 2000’s and a part of daily life with the development of Internet technologies. Social network is the multimedia “which allow the social interaction, unite the virtual and the actual and the online and the offline, bring the practices of daily life to the virtual space and incorporate the virtual space into the practices of daily life” (Özerkan, 2014: 245). Gönül Eda Özgül (2015: 89) states that social network is not only the production of the socio-economical and cultural contexts it arises from but also a medium which forms the reality it belongs to. Bruns and Bahnish (2009: 7) name “social network” as the communication technology which is based on the Internet technology, provides the social interactivity and sharing, and enable the users to influence the others. In this sense, social networks are affected by the social structures and culture in which they exist. Contents created in social network function as a means of sharing, discussion and socialization in public and private spaces. Thus, social network can be regarded a new medium through which users’ perceptions, attitudes and modes of behavior can be reformed or changed. Özerkan (2014: 243) points out that with the beginning of 2000’s, the cyber world of the Internet and the actual world have been articulated and their relationship keeps developing into a complementary way. Via social networks and social media, innumerable messages, in a flow of information, are transmitted to the masses. In a process of communication, each sharing conveys a message which could possibly be intended to alter codes of behavior, values and thoughts in a given society. Opportunities provided by social
- 234. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 220 networks, transforming and ever-changing socio-cultural life have initiated new discussions. To clarify this, Erol Maral (2004: 217) says that technology is not independent from the social structure it arises from and is formed with that structure as a result of which values, including power relations and inequalities, are brought into the structure of technology. Social networks can function in determining social and cultural structures of a society and breaking the social taboos. On the contrary, they could highly possibly reproduce existing misbeliefs and reinforce the taboos by means of language and images they exploit. Social networks have become a significant medium by which social representations of gender, that is, systems of values, thoughts and practices that allow to explore, perceive and regulate life, are constantly reproduced, reconstructed and transformed (İlhan, 2011: 355). Notions and discourses with a deep-rooted history date back a long time ago. They are, most of the time, remembered or recalled by the speakers of a language. Notions are embodied by discourses and discourses are brought into life as acts, helping individuals develop a perception of things in the present time. Then, discourses widely accepted pervade the language and act as a tool to interpret how we see things. In this regard, it is undeniable that gender stereotypes constantly reproduced in daily language are also brought into social networks by users who are speakers of that language as well. Use of everyday language in social media platforms contributes to the conveyance of practices, notions and discourses of everyday life to the social networks. As a result, social networks turn out to be a new reconstruction site of social life and culture. As an effective organization of socialization, media, to a certain extent, form men’s and children’s point of views and attitudes towards femininity and female values. In is unfortunate that media negatively reinforce women’s perceptions of themselves (Özerkan, 2004: 21), and mediate to exist social stereotypes of female roles. Especially, young generations are exposed more to the bombardment of messages of media from early years of age upward, which results in youngsters’ adopting gender roles. They learn “how to represent their sex” and internalize masculine or feminine roles. Media primarily degrade femininity to “female body”, and women are, most of the time, trapped in patriarchal roles, and are generally demonstrated to be linked to house, women’s identity is constructed through their spouses and children. Media’s depictions of women and men cause descriptions of sex that are commonly accepted in society to be developed, maintained or altered (Kaypakoğlu, 2004: 93-94). 3. What an image is in the digital era It is undeniable that visual culture has been transformed by the Internet technology in 21.century. A great number of images are shared on social media platforms everyday just as new digital media refashion the material conditions of images. The development of computer-controlled photocomposition techniques has affected people’s view of images. Today, computer-controlled photocomposition techniques and the Internet technologies are widely applied either to create original images or to reform, reinterpret and reproduce them that have already existed. This causes images to be considered ubiquitous in the digital age. Moreover, instant sharing allows users to rapidly transmit images on social media platforms by which interactive communication, together with the flow of information, is enhanced. Digital images of social media are, therefore, part of everyday life in today’s visual culture. The digitalization of images necessitates a newer perspective in re-defining what an image is. Regarding what an image is, a variety of definitions can be suggested by disciplines such as literature, linguistics, photography, painting, cinema, media studies, philosophy, education and computer sciences. However, in the scope of this article, the concept of image is dealt in the context of visual culture of new media. An image, according to The Penguin Dictionary of Media Studies, is simply defined as “what appears in the
- 235. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 221 photograph or on the screen in front of us” (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 2007: 178). If elaborately defined, an image […] is a collection of signs and symbols – what we find when we look at a photograph, a film still, a shot of a television screen, a print advertisement, or just about anything. … Images generally are visual, often are mediated – carried by the mass media – and are connected to information, values, beliefs, attitudes, and ideas people have. … An image is a collection of signs, and each of these signs has meaning; in any image, there are many different levels of meaning and interactions between meanings (Berger, 2008: 61). A strict bond is required to be formed between an image maker and a community in order that the message conveyed via the images can be better understood by the target group of people. Each image constitutes a message for the targeted audience. Images, thus, function in causing people to develop an attitude and adopt new ideas or influencing their decisions on condition that a common sense can be established in a community. John Berger (2008: 9-10) in his Ways of Seeing associates an image with seeing: An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved – for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing. […] Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing. Berger’s quotation above lays emphasis that reproduction of an image cannot be distinguished from the subjective way of perception. Each looker can make his/her own interpretation out of the image seen. It is possible to decontextualize an image from its original meaning that it stands for and tackle it independently from its entity. For the sake of a nouveau meaning, the image can reformed, reproduced and reinterpreted with a user’s subjective vision. Creation of an image paves the way for a dichotomy: First of all, an image which is subjectively interpreted and (re)produced through “information gathered and processed” as Rudolf Arnheim (1997: 1) points out, by individual mind that either recollects discourses and acts performed in the past and connected to the present, or absorbs particular information of the present to process. Secondly, collective mind which affects the way an individual reproduces an image. The former refers to the notion that each person is enabled to create an image via his/her past or present experiences whereas the latter sheds light on the fact that each subjective (re)creation of an image stems from the totality of a social ambiance in which societal or communal factors such as family, society, nationality, religion, state, national forces, educational institutions, media, ethnicity, collective identity, gender etc. play a crucial role. Subjectivity, therefore, can be claimed to be (re)formed in a cultural framework by social (re)constructions. 3.1. Caps: a hybrid unit of the sayable and the visible Caps, a new medium of humour and satire in which image and discourse coexist in an eclectic style “… is a narrative form interwoven with daily life and current issues” (Dede at al., 2014: 109). Works of caps are “cognitive visions which the artists create through their imagination and not only include concepts concerning the world and ideas but also display figurative characteristics” (Göğüş and et al., 1998: 65). Caps is exploited to describe an instant state/situation or a person through an image captured from any form of media such as picture, painting, video, film, television programs etc. and originally stated or quoted writing which is meant to complement the image for a better depiction. Both the image and text are individually present for their own sake at first. The maker either applies electronic photocomposition
- 236. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 222 techniques to reform the image or acts in loyalty to the original image. Most of the time, s/he decontextualizes the image to integrate it with the written text. Finally, the sayable and the visible are reformed in a unit constituting a “sentence-image” (Rancière, 2008: 50), after which caps, a new and coherent context, is offered to the readers. Pioneered by İnci Caps website and İnci Sözlük, an online interactive dictionary designed in 2009 by İsmail Alpen and Serkan İnci, Caps movement has allowed images to be simply distributed in digital form on a variety of social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter. Caps movement primarily pursues entertainment and social networking websites have been Caps makers’ playgrounds. In İnci Caps Kutsal Mizah Kırbacı written by Umut Kullar and Serkan İnci to introduce Caps movement, Kullar and İnci (2015: 9) assert that İnci Caps can be considered to have created a new sense of humour on social media. Millions of social media users are regarded as the founders or creators of İnci Caps movement (2015: 10), as the writers state. Kullar and İnci (2015: 11) put the dynamic process of creating caps into words explaining that “acting arbitrarily is an obvious requirement of caps philosophy; most of the creations are, therefore, improvised. […] It is neither a doctrine nor a paradox put forth to raise an issue. It is, in its definite and plain term, humour”. Caps instantly come out of human nature (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 16). In addition, “individuals’ immediate interactivity with the facts of world” and “the close relation between the increasing power of caps and participation of users” (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 15) contribute to the dynamic processes of creation and distribution of caps. In the process of creation, events are humorously redesigned or a visual description is satirized (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 25). Kullar and İnci (2015: 85) call caps makers “mizahşör”. “Mizahşör” is derived from Turkish words “mizah” and “silahşör”. In English, “mizah” means “humour” and “silahşör”, “musketeer”. Such an appellation indicates that caps makers are regarded as those who use their sense of humour as a gun. Humour is considered to be a highly valued individual act by caps makers. By that individual act, a great number of people can be gathered to act collectively and “break taboos” (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 19) of sacred values established in a given society regarding religion, nationalism, gender, politics etc. Caps movement is considered to have created a new sense of humour on social media, especially on social networking websites, thanks to caps makers who have created a new sense of humour, “techno-humour” (“tekno-mizah”, in Turkish). We offer “techno-humour” as a new sense of humour which has been developed through the digital age of the 21.century on social media platforms. Caps makers who exploit caps to redefine cultural ideals inherited from the society and institution of family undermine these ideals by a satirical approach. Deconstruction of the sacred values, now reconstructed in a different manner, does not offend but makes laugh. On the other hand, it is an unavoidable fact that “Caps makers are differentiated in cultural background and take an individual approach to humour” (Kullar and İnci, 2015: 19). Variety in viewpoints is linked to one’s outlook on life, character, education s/he receives from family and school, social sphere and relations, values, religious belief, sex etc. Yet, there still remains a risk in misinterpreting and misperceiving things and, as a result, reconstructing and reinforcing a misbelief in a community. Self-reference always relies on one’s former experience and actual knowledge of life. Gender is of such an utmost controversy that preconceived thoughts and discourses on being a “man or woman” are repetitively reproduced in a community. Since this writing wishes to handle problematical representation of woman persona and femininity through caps, it is aimed to demonstrate that not only thoughts and discourses but also images are mediated to reproduce misconceived or misbelieved facts about woman. Discriminative attitudes against femininity, forming a woman’s character in a restricted and, mostly, patriarchal frame and irrational expectations about what a woman is supposed to be are not only constituted on a discursive basis but also embodied in images, which corroborates us that “our thoughts
- 237. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 223 influence what we see, and vice versa” (Arnheim, 1997: 15). Here are three examples to practice what has been discussed so far. Source: http://www.incicaps.com/c/mt6m4dy9g/ Fig. 1. “December, 1; Turkey’s conquest of Brazil”. To begin with, this caps should be explained to have been based on a sensational news that Acun Ilıcalı, a Turkish media boss and Adriana Lima, a worldwide known model had a relationship. The settling is Istanbul with a Turkish flag, Ortaköy mosque with its “phallic” minaret and Marmara Sea which altogether represent a worldwide known image of Istanbul, Turkey on the background. Adriana and Acun seem to be closely sitting on a ferry. The text supplies information: “December, 1; Turkey’s conquest of Brazil”. Adriana Lima is both represented as an object of desire and a non-Turkish/Muslim woman who is conquered by a Muslim Turkish man as though she was a piece of land. This gendered discourse reminds us of a frequently used discourse which was supposedly produced to reinforce the national feelings of Turkish people: “Every Turk is born as a soldier”. Turkish men have historically been associated with soldiering. Acun as a Turkish man and soldier dominates over Adriana both as a (Brazilian) woman and representative of Brazil, a foreign soil. In other words, the image of Adriana is invaded both as a land and a woman. From another point of view, the fact that a foreign woman is emotionally and sexually tempted by a Turkish man is regarded as a heroic success some Turkish men brag about in Turkish society. Last but not least, national and religious feelings interwoven with patriarchal discourse and consideration put forth a gendered sentence-image.
- 238. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 224 Source: http://www.incicaps.com/b/aile-ve-sosyal-politikalar-bakan%C4%B1/ Fig. 2. “If a Muslim woman does not know how to make pastry, then her family is doomed to be ruined”. Ayşe Gürcan, Turkish Minister of Family and Social Policies The discourse is aimed to be overturned through the caps produced to supposedly offer a critical approach towards the discourse above. However, the values ascribed to women by the discourse itself are reproduced. Similar to the discourse which positions women at “home” and represents them as the main actors who maintain the marriage, this caps degrades women into “female body” with the use of a sexy woman representative of a servant who is supposedly to fulfil her spouse’s “appetite” every way that she can. Moreover, gender division of labor attributed to women and men is re-emphasized. The woman used on caps is both sexy and diligent, and such expectations from women are reinforced through these representation. From a different angle, it is hinted by the image of woman on this caps that women should always be well-groomed and look physically attractive in the eyes of men.
- 239. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 225 Source: http://www.incicaps.com/b/merak-etme-ac%C4%B1m%C4%B1ycak/ Fig. 3. “First night (represented)” The caps which is illustrated with a bloody bed and a sentence “First night (represented)” refers to the first sexual experience of a woman with her spouse. The woman is not only expected to be virgin but also deflowered at the first night of her marriage by some in Turkey. In Turkish society, virginity, by some, is associated with “purity” and a woman is expected to be untouched before marriage. Sexual intercourse before marriage is considered “illegitimate” for women who are, otherwise, despised and even cast out by their families and society. The women are, therefore, advised to protect themselves until she gets married. This caps reproduces the expectation regarding the image of “virgin woman” and reinforce the common belief concerning the importance of virginity in Turkish society. 4. Conclusion With the near-ubiquity of the Internet technologies provided by smart phones, tablets, computers etc. access to acquiring and publishing online information has been easier in recent decade. With this advance in information technology come new opportunities for content providers to produce their own contents and to develop effective ways of transferring online information to other Internet users. Digitalization of images through the Internet technologies and computer-controlled photocomposition techniques enables an image (re)maker to easily reproduce and reform caps in search of a broader meaning the image itself provides. On the other hand, reproduction of an image cannot be considered independent from the image (re)maker’s socio-cultural background and “values, beliefs, ideas, attitudes etc. s/he adopts from the society s/he is born into” as well as personal way of seeing. Therefore, deeply-root gendered discourses are inevitably brought into social media platforms by Turkish content providers and stereotypes regarding feminine values are reproduced and reinforced via caps. To conclude, it is highly recommended that the Internet users alertly consume social media and social networking websites and be conscious media literates.
- 240. Çağrı Yılmaz andKübra Özdemir / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 226 References Abercrombie, N., Longhurst, B. (2007). Dictionary of media studies. London: Penguin Books. Arnheim, R. (1997). Visual thinking. California: University of California Press. Berger, A. A. (2008). Seeing is believing: an introduction to visual communication (3. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Berger, J. (2008). Ways of seeing. London: Penguin Books. Bourdieu, P. (2014). Eril tahakküm. (Çev: B. Yılmaz). İstanbul: Bağlam Yayıncılık. Bruns, A., Bahnisch, M. (2009). Social media: tools for user-generated content social drivers behind growing consumer participation in user-led content generation. Australia: Smart Services CRC Pty Ltd. Dede, K.; Koca, B.; Erdem, E. E. (2014). Güncel siyaset, tarihsel değer ve mizah arasında “İsmet capsleri”ni okumak. Birikim, 302, s. 106-112. Göğüş, B.; Oğuzkan, F.; Önerköy, O.; Ünlü, M.; Koçak, S. (1998). Yazın terimleri sözlüğü. Ankara: Dil Derneği. http://www.incicaps.com/b/aile-ve-sosyal-politikalar-bakan%C4%B1/ (Access Date: 20 July 2015). http://www.incicaps.com/b/merak-etme-ac%C4%B1m%C4%B1ycak/ (Access Date: 20 July 2015). http://www.incicaps.com/c/mt6m4dy9g/ (Access Date: 20 July 2015). Kaypakoğlu, S. (2004). Toplumsal cinsiyet ve iletişim. İstanbul: Naos Yayınları. Kullar, U., İnci, S. (2015). İnci caps kutsal mizah kırbacı. İstanbul: Epsilon Yayınevi. Maral, E. (2014). İktidar, erkeklik ve teknoloji. Toplum ve bilim dergisi, 101, s. 127-143. Özerkan, Ş. A. (2004). Bir toplumsallaştırma aracı olarak medyanın kadın imajına yaklaşımı. Kadın çalışmalarında disiplinlerarası buluşma, Cilt: 2, 21-29. Özgül, E. G. (2015). İletişimde sosyal medya, sosyal medyada etkileşim. İstanbul: Kalkedon Yayıncılık. Rancière, J. (2008). Görüntülerin yazgısı duyulurun paylaşımı. (Çev: A. U. Kılıç). İstanbul: Versus Kitap.
- 241. Çiğdem Akanyıldız /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 227 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Popular Feminism and the Contemporary Construction of Femininity in Popular Women’s Magazines in Turkey in the 1990s Çiğdem Akanyıldız* Boğaziçi University, Translation Studies, Turkey Abstract This paper explores the construction of contemporary femininity and popular feminist discourses in the 1990s in Turkey by analyzing three popular women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Kadınca, two of which are Turkish editions of well-known global media forms. Loaded with gendered discourses, images and meanings from cover to end page, these magazines sought to contribute to the reorganization of gender relations and attempted to integrate a specific woman identity into a gendered social space. Going beyond conventional family-oriented femininity discourses, these popular women’s magazines defined a “new ideal woman” and assigned new meanings to the concept of “femininity.” Unlike traditional women’s magazines that located women inside the house, they attempted to incorporate feminism into the popular. With a particular reference to the economic, social and cultural context of the 1990s in Turkey and in the world, this paper aims to indicate the ways in which these magazines addressed gender problems, the limits and contradictions of their feminist discourses, and changing femininity discourses, symbols and codes in these media forms. It argues that the traditional male-dominant regime on the one hand, and the market-based liberation discourse of global capitalism on the other, framed the popular discourses of these women’s magazines, which veiled the socially constructed characteristics of intersexual differences. While these popular women’s magazines encouraged women to be stronger and active in private and public spaces, they nevertheless reduced women’s problems and gender relations to psychological cases. The femininity that these magazines attempted to construct is leveled to achievement in career, social and personal life, beauty and glossy physical appearance, never-ending youth, and sex appeal. The solutions they offered to women’s problems mostly addressed middle-classes, and they presented feminism as a lifestyle rather than as a political movement. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Feminism; women’s magazines; femininity; female body * Corresponding Author: +90-212-227-4480. Email address: cigdemakanyildiz@yahoo.com
- 242. Çiğdem Akanyıldız /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 228 1. Introduction Many scholars have aptly emphasized the role of the media in constructing and maintaining gender identities and roles and in producing meanings of masculinity and femininity. As Liesbet van Zoonen (1994) says, the media has always played a vital role at the heart of feminist critique, which blames the media for constructing a certain image or model of women (p.11). In particular, from the 1970s onward, the early feminist popular culture studies began to focus on commercial media as an area in which ideal womanhood, femininity and gender symbols were constructed. They have demonstrated the function of the visual media in internalization of the subjectivities, desires and sexual differences attributed to women, and criticized the masculinist language and discourses that they disseminated (Macdonald, 1995; Ballaster et al., 1991; Hermes, 1995; Winship, 1987; McRobbie, 1978). In Turkey as well as in the world, women’s participation and visibility in social and political life considerably increased, and their lives went beyond housework and childcare from the 1960s onwards. Professional career, economic independence, participation in civil activities increasingly became an important aspect of the middle-class women’s identity. This period also witnessed a transformation in women’s consumption patterns. All these developments paved the way for the emergence of a “new woman” myth in the media and other cultural forms. The social and economic transformation experienced by women radically affected the production and consumption of gender-based magazines. Correspondingly, women’s magazines acquired a big market in the 1980s and 1990s. The place they occupied in the advertisement market and their influence in the escalating global consumption values sets an important dimension of market-media relations. This paper explores the construction of contemporary femininity and the emergence of popular feminist discourses in the 1990s in Turkey by analyzing three popular women’s magazines – Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Kadınca, two of which are Turkish editions of well-known global media forms. With a particular reference to the economic, social and cultural context of the 1990s in Turkey, this paper seeks to indicate the ways in which these magazines addressed gender problems; the limits and contradictions of their feminist discourses; and the changing femininity discourses, symbols, and codes contained in these popular media forms. 2. Contemporary Construction of Femininity and Popular Feminism In the 1990s, popular women’s magazines attempted to provide women with the technologies of body management and ways of disciplining their body in conformity to global beauty ideals, consumerism and changing gender roles. Full of discourses on female body and femininity, these popular women’s magazines, which became widespread in the West in the 1970s and in Turkey in the 1990s, sought to teach female readers how to have a desirable body and transform it into a social instrument. By doing so, these magazines contributed to the reorganization of gender relations and the integration of a specific woman identity into a gendered social space. Although the magazines under study allocate a significant amount of space in their layouts to body- related topics, they were never limited solely to beauty, sex, and fashion. Indeed, business life, personal development, health, travel, cultural trends, hobbies, etc., were among the essential topics that these magazines covered. It should also be stressed that issues such as domesticity, child care, and motherhood take up very limited space in the magazines unlike earlier versions of popular women’s magazines in which women were represented as ideal wives and mothers. In fact, unlike the previous magazines that located women inside the house, popular women’s magazines of the 1990s appreciated and promoted a certain type
- 243. Çiğdem Akanyıldız /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 229 of woman – free, brave, “sociable,” dedicated to her independence, and in pursue of a career. In this respect, they undertook to function as a guide to construct a certain type of individual who was particularly taken within the framework of “liberation.” Some contemporary feminist researchers admitted that they even began to enjoy reading popular women’s magazines in this period. However, just as Ballaster, Beetham, Frazer, and Hebron (1991) say, this pleasure was not naive and unquestionable. Angela McRobbie interprets this confession of feminist researchers as a blurring of the line between the feminist and the “ordinary woman,” as well as femininity and feminism (as cited in Kırca-Schroeder, 2007, p. 28-29). Such a change can also be said to have played a role in the popularization of feminism. Indeed, popular women’s magazines of the 1990s adapted a specific feminist discourse in parallel with two simultaneous and interrelated developments in Turkey: the first is the emergence of a women’s movement that began to question Kemalism as the secularist, nationalist official ideology in Turkey, which sponsored a sort of state feminism by making political, social and legal reforms regarding women’s life and sociopolitical status. The second is the transformation of women’s social and economic position in Turkey, which both helped to expand women’s media and transformed the content of popular publication. In other words, the political, social and cultural atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s provided an opportunity for the integration of the discourses and images of femininity into a feminism that did not have a collective political objective. As a matter of fact, while feminism was becoming popularized more than ever before, the newly emerging women’s magazines began to give place to feminist thoughts, gender inequalities, female discrimination and oppression; thereby attempting to incorporate feminism into the popular. The femininity of the 1940s and 50s was generally characterized on the basis of domesticity and dependency. As Susan Bordo (1993) says, “career woman” was a dirty term (p.170). When the word “woman” or “young girl” was uttered, one was to think of childlike, nonassertive, helpless, domestic, invisible characters. However, women were offered a different world in the magazines of the 1990s. Terms such as “the woman of the 1990s”, “the New Woman”, “the woman of the age” all definitely referred to the fact that women were going through a great transformation. Symbols and codes of “being a woman like a woman” had already begun to change. The new middle class woman was not expected to “be ladylike and a proper woman,” “avoid doing a man’s job,” or “be the mistress of her house,” but rather to be free, brave, decisive, conscious, economically independent, consumer, chic, well-groomed, sexy, open to global cultural values – both “a little bit rebellious” and “dignified,” aware of her rights, “a little feminist,” but “mostly feminine.” The magazines promised women an alternative way of femininity under the name of “the New Woman,” and they sought to teach women where, when and how they would consume, what type of places they would go to, what they would wear and eat, how they would attract someone, fashion and trends, ‘in’s and ‘out’s and global cultural values. The call for a departure from domestic issues and going beyond their identities as housewives and mothers carried a feminist tone in itself. In fact, criticism regarding the subordination of women in society projected a kind of feminist perspective. In fact, the magazines also took a keen interest in women’s daily problems and gender discrimination, and, especially Marie Claire and Kadınca, functioned as platforms on which women’s gender-related experiences were exchanged. They highlighted the emancipation of women from subordination in terms of social status and sexuality. So, what was the feminism of the magazines like? As can be seen in the women’s magazines in the 1990s, the concept of “modernity” remained at the center of social discussions in Turkey. While a new type of woman was constructed upon the image of “New Woman” in Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire’s western European and American editions, the primary
- 244. Çiğdem Akanyıldız /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 230 concept in Turkey was “modernity” or more specifically the modernity-tradition dilemma. What is referred to as “the modern thought and life style,” which has been supposed to promise liberation for women, was the main criterion for early Turkish feminism. Not only in the 1990s but in every period of Turkish politics, the tension between Islamism and secularism, modernity and traditionalism was reflected in these popular women’s magazines as well. The feminist discourses of the magazines manifested itself in the way that women’s place in the traditional society should change, their visibility should increase in the public sphere and they should acquire more rights and freedom. Consequently, specific problems that women have faced in a country like Turkey, where modernity and tradition have been central defining political concepts, necessarily both fed the popular feminist approaches and loosened up the limit between popular feminism and radical feminism. Another point that characterized the feminism of the magazines in question is their emphasis on success, self-confidence, and career. The words “individual,” “individualization,” “liberation,” “power,” and “self- confidence” appeared as key concepts in these popular women’s magazines. However, while encouraging women to become stronger and more active in public and private spheres, the magazines addressed gender- related questions in such a way that they reduced women’s problems and gender relations to psychological situations. The self-confidence and powerfulness were taken as a psychological case; thereby neglecting the complex historical and social dimensions of gender relations. In other words, these magazines ignore the very fact that gender differences are socially constructed. Furthermore, the editors and authors of these magazines understood feminism as a lifestyle, but not as a collective political movement. In this sense, the magazines put forth a sort of post-feminist discourse that corresponded to the personalization of the women’s movement and its so-called “purification” from politics. As a matter of fact, while these magazines were encouraging women to raise their social visibility and power, they also reduced feminism to a lifestyle, trend or a matter of appearance. Moreover, the solutions that these popular women’s magazines offered to women’s problems also mostly appealed to middle-class women. Neither Cosmo nor the others were interested in working class women, the women employed in informal sectors or housewives that formed the basis of women’s employment in Turkey. Working women’s lives were actually pursuant to waged, mid-level and educated women. Hence, there was almost no room in the magazines for issues such as exploitation and unequal wages. The “career and success-based feminism” of popular women’s magazines was also framed by consumer concerns. As Janice Winship points out, gender definitions have been linked to the development of consumer culture and women’s magazines set a good example as to how they were used in the twentieth century to inspire and publicize certain forms of femininity by representing the practices of consumption (as cited in Celia Lury, 1996, p. 132). Winship illustrates in a study of British women’s magazines that women readers’ role constructed as mother, housewife or wife in the early or mid-twentieth century was transformed into a feminine individual with emphasis on appearance, sexuality and glamour towards the end of the twentieth century (ibid.). Indeed, with the advent of the 1990s, feminist mottos appeared in various ads in such type of popular women’s magazines. A set of feminist slogans and discourses was integrated into commercial concerns and strategies, which can be called the “commodification of feminist values.” As Myra Macdonald (1995) points out, “consumer discourses in both advertising and the women’s monthly magazines press now eagerly absorbed the terminology of self-assertiveness and achievement, transforming feminism’s challenging collective program into atomized acts of individual consumption” (p. 91).
- 245. Çiğdem Akanyıldız /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 231 3. Conclusion Although the editors of the magazines under study regarded themselves as moderate feminists, they mostly stated that the term “femininity” was always “more cheerful and warmer” for them. Why did the editors deploy these two terms in a way that they could be placed on the same category? Was feminism not an intellectual and political movement while the concept of femininity refers to changing characteristics attributed to women in a given society? The answers to these questions lie in the social and cultural context of the 1980s and 1990s. In the main-stream global media, women of the 1990s were expected to be economically independent, free, conscious, consumer, beautiful, charming and cheerful. The popular women’s magazines, which put the concept of femininity at the center, often promoted the idea that if women placed importance on their femininity, they would feel deserving, special, and powerful, underlying the relationship between beauty, femininity, and self-confidence. The women’s magazines under study were published by female editors and writers. The administration, office work, human resources, topic selection and cover design were all in the hands of female editors. The editors of these three magazines clearly stated that they adopted various versions of feminism. However, the boundaries of the popular feminist critique reflected in these magazines were not only drawn by the editor and writers. Advertisement policies and strategies, as an important aspect of popular media forms, were, and still are, mostly handled by male administrators – let me call this “male-dominated concerns.” And market conditions and commercial targets (let me call this “capitalist concerns”) directly influenced the content, function and messages of the magazines. In fact, Macdonald (1995) argues that the quasi- feminist goals of freedom and self-fulfillment were combined by popular women’s magazines with commodity and service consumption (p.90-91). On the one hand, commercial concerns exploiting women as consumers, and, on the other, the male-dominant discourse demanding the continuation of traditional gender roles ultimately set the limits for feminist discourses in the popular women’s magazines in the 1990s. As Janet Lee (1988) puts forth, reducing female liberation to sexuality and love affairs means the construction of women’s struggle for emancipation as to serve men’s sexual desires. In the same manner, popular women’s magazines lacked a standpoint to define female sexuality independently from masculine terms and the male viewpoint (p. 169). In conclusion, while these magazines encouraged women to raise their social visibility and power, they nevertheless served to draw a specific female image in accordance with the traditional male-dominant regime on the one hand, and the market-based liberation discourse of global capitalism on the other. As Ballaster et al. (1991) say, albeit within a different context, what really mattered was not pursuing a feminist agenda, but being “suitably feminine” (p. 157).
- 246. Çiğdem Akanyıldız /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 232 References Ballaster, R., Beetham, M., Frazer, E., & Hebron, S. (1991). Women’s worlds: Ideology, femininity, and the women’s magazine. London: Macmillan. Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: feminism, Western culture, and the body. California: University of California Press. Hermes, J. (1995). Reading women’s magazines. Oxford: Polity and Blacwell Press. Kırca-Schroeder, S. (2007). Popüler feminizm: Türkiye ve Britanya’da kadın dergileri. İstanbul: Bağlam Yayınları. Lee, J. (1988). “Care to join me in an upwardly mobile tango?” Postmodernism and the “new woman.” In L. Gamman & M. Marshment (Eds.), The female gaze: women as viewers of popular culture (pp. 166- 172). London: The Women’s Press. Lury, C. (1996). Consumer culture. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Macdonald, M. (1995). Representing women: myths of femininity in the popular media. London: E. Arnold. McRobbie, A. (1978). Jackie: An ideology of adolescent femininity. Birmingham: The Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Van Zoonen, L. (1994). Feminist media studies. London: Sage Publications. Winship, J. (1987). Inside women’s magazines. London: Pandora Press.
- 247. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 233 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Crisis of Islamic Masculinities in 1968: Literature and Masquerade Çimen Günay-Erkola , Uğur Çalışkanb* a Özyeğin University, Turkey b Boğaziçi University, Turkey Abstract As feminist scholars reorient the binaries man and woman, the importance of the critical study of men and masculinities reaches a new intensity. In this paper, we seek to analyze the forms of Islamist masculinity in the turbulent history of Turkey’s 1968, focusing on a key Islamist novel, published in the upheavals of anti-American demonstrations, massive protests and strikes of student-worker alliance. Following Gramsci’s unorthodox use of the term “hegemony”, we will explore the moral and intellectual leadership suggested by the Islamic persona of the novel Minyeli Abdullah by Hekimoğlu İsmail, the pseudonym for Ömer Okçu, who was a member of the military back in 1968. As Islamist extremism complicated the political scene of the 1980s in Turkey, Minyeli Abdullah became a cult novel, popular with the masculine role model it suggested. Our intention is to investigate the roots of the hegemonic Islamist masculinity it suggests and to decipher the hidden traits of the victim/witness role it presents, with a feminist questioning of traditional forms of male power and superiority. While masquerading as a personality trait, masculinity, Raewyn Connell says, has a de facto institution backing it. An analysis of this pioneering Islamist novel will show that there are several institutions behind Islamist masculinity supporting it, as well as pushing it into crises. Our analysis will yield important insights on visions still influential in Turkey, regarding the ideal Muslim men (and women), and also on the role of political Islam in moulding an Islamist masculinity. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Masculinity studies; Islamist novels, hegemonic masculinity, literature of 1960s; Islamic masculinity. * Corresponding Author. E-mail address: ugur.caliskan@boun.edu.tr
- 248. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 234 Discussions surrounding Muslim men in Hekimoğlu İsmail’s cult novel Minyeli Abdullah (1968) provide us with an intricate image of an Islamic and patriarchal society. The novel is set in Egypt during the upheavals of 1950s and 60s, and the protagonist of the novel, Abdullah, is the prime example of how Islamic men should fight against communism and Westernization. In the novel, there is hardly a recognition of the “varieties” of Islam, as Hekimoğlu İsmail has clear-cut definitions in mind about Islam and he attempts to portray an essentialized form of Islamic masculinity in the figure of Abdullah. Abdullah, through out the entire novel, fights against Egyptian supporters of Westernization, secularists, communists, non-muslims, and pseudo-muslims, who do not obey the rules of the religion in line with his preferences. Overall, the novel is a saga of Islamic masculinity, which ends with the death of its protagonist fighting the Israeli army during the six-day war between Egypt, Syria and Israel in 1967. In this paper, we aim to show that Minyeli Abdullah often falls into crises of masculinity despite the monolithic image forced onto him. Our intention therefore, is to make visible that Abdullah is not as monolithic and unproblematic as the writer intended him to be, and to discuss his crises at the face of the patriarchal Egyptian society. Minyeli Abdullah can be evaluated as an example of the line of novels written in 1960s in Turkey by conservative-Islamist writers to discuss “cultural imperialism” on Islamic societies. Although Turkish novel has been preoccupied with the imperialism of “the West” since its early examples in Tanzimat era, in 1960s a new line of novels emerge which negotiate if the gems of unspoiled Turkishness are in Islam. An earlier member of such novels is Tarık Buğra’s Küçük Ağa (1963) and its sequel Küçük Ağa Ankara’da (1967), in which Buğra focuses on Mehmet Reşit, an Islamic clergyman sent from İstanbul to the little Anatolian town Akşehir, who supports the Ottoman Sultan against the nationalists and experiences a drastic change of mind in the course of time. Both novels touch upon the moral and political rises and falls of Turkish nationalism and negotiate Islam as the source of the glorious Ottoman past. The search for Islamic roots was a central feature in many other writers of this period as well. Poets such as Cahit Zarifoğlu and Sezai Karakoç, who gathered around the journal Diriliş in 1960s, and İsmet Özela who criticized the pre-acceptance of the idea of a “civilized West” attempted to further the question of Islamic civilization in Turkish literature1 . This search paved the way for Turk-Islam synthesis, a project of unification –aesthetic, social and political unification— of the Turkish-Islamic national identity, which gained power and prominence in 1980s. Hekimoğlu İsmail is the penname for Ömer Okçu, who was a pioneering novelist in Islamist circles of late 1960s. Born in 1932, Okçu graduated from military school and became an officer in the Turkish army. In 1957, he went to Emirdağ and met Said-i Nursi, the leader of the religious Nur movement through Sungur Ağabey who was a member of “Ağabeyler Konseyi” (“Brothers Council”), which consists of the initial disciples of Nursi. Okçu became a student of Nursi for a while. He travelled to USA as a military officer and carried Risale-i Nur, collection of the writings of Said-i Nursi to there. He engaged in small businesses in Istanbul. At the same time, he was a columnist in major Islamist newspapers with the nickname Hekimoğlu İsmail. In 1972, he retired from the army. In late 1980s, he established Timaş Publishing, which is now one of the major actors of Islamist publishing in Turkey. (Kalyoncu) Kenan Çayır, the writer of Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey notes that the novel Minyeli Abdullah (1968) has reached its seventy-fifth edition with total sales of 275,000 copies as of 2003 which signs a popularity that can hardly be left unnoticed2 . In an interview, Okçu states his motivation for the novel as follows: b İsmet Özel, whose first book Yes Revolt (Evet İsyan, 1969) reflects socialist tones, is one of the forefront names that contributed to romantic revolutionism in Turkish letters. He later took a different path and chose Islamic mysticism turned jihadism with nationalist twists. 2 Minyeli Abdullah is also adapted for cinema in 1990.
- 249. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 235 There were three important strains of thought during the 1960s: nationalists (türkçüler), religious people (dindarlar) and those who were against religion (dine karşı olanlar). The ideas of each were being propagated through books during those years.... The books of religious people, however, consisted only of ilmihals (essential Islamic teaching books). They were repeatedly publishing ilmihals. Yet ilmihal is a book that is read by people who have already adopted Islam. Actually, the most important thing was a concern with ‘how might we lead people to believe in Islam’ I mean the way (usul) was wrong ... we had to talk to the man in the street. (Kalyoncu) The novel, as evident from the interview, is the didactic story of the growth of a young boy into manhood negotiating the norms of Islam, and trying to decide his path to follow in life. Hekimoğlu İsmail, in Minyeli Abdullah, turns to Arab territories, which almost always dominated definitions of Islam and Islamic masculinities. The novel is set in Egypt, but Egypt in this novel is in fact a replica for Turkey. Hekimoğlu choses the setting as Egypt in order to escape political pressures, but the questions and upheavals he discusses in the novel are pertinent to Turkey as well. Both countries suffer from authoritarian regimes, top-to bottom secularization, and military interventions, which give Hekimoğlu the necessary ground to link the identity trouble of Muslim men with a questioning of Westernization and the subordination it created. Although Turkey is never colonized, in the literal sense, the belated Westernization it experienced qualifies as a case of cultural colonization. Hekimoğlu mirrors the drastic change Turkey experienced and comments on changing norms in cultural patterns by referring to bohemian youngsters who fail to appreciate Islam in Egypt, disoriented families unable to protect their children against Western imports, disillusioned bureaucrats and soldiers under the perils of Western powers. Hekimoğlu pushes Islam forward as the remedy and writes critically of all things he considers un-Islamic. Yet, the transformations of the protagonist Abdullah in the novel show that the Islamic masculinity he “performs” is a complicated mixture, and must be carefully examined to understand Islamist ideology. There is a wide range of manners in studying men and here in our attempt to understand Minyeli better, we want to interrogate the masculinities presented in the novel with a critical attitude. The construction of masculinities in the specific discourse of Islam is the center of gravity in this novel. So our examination requires a careful reading of gender norms attached both to men and women creating different power hierarchies around them, within the discourse of Hekimoğlu İsmail’s understanding of Islam. We argue that in the novel, men’s power is challenged drastically although their position in the society as the dominant social category stands still. Abdullah’s socio-political transformations show that the experience of being a man is a dynamic process, which includes fracturing, and a (sketchy) re-construction, with a fragile end product, which makes it possible to discuss masculinity as a “crisis”. There is now a tendency to talk about “crises in masculinity” because of the changing global context around men’s power caused by acute transformations in capitalism, men falling into unemployment, women’s rise into power, abolition of the power of fatherhood in the family etc. To argue that “crisis” in masculinity is not due to recent social changes or policy changes whatsoever but masculinity itself is crisis per se, is also a powerful argument, suggested by masculinity studies. Men construct themselves in opposition to “the non-man” and the risk of falling in the category of the non-man serves as a constant threat, a reminder for men to hold still against conditions that attempt to change them away from power. Tim Edwards, who provides a fruitful discussion of the “crisis of masculinity” by exploring the divergence of “crisis without” and “crisis from within” in his book Cultures of Masculinity, refers to the “sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness or uncertainty” that becomes a significant threat on being a man (Edwards, 6-7).
- 250. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 236 As Raewyn Connell, one of the pioneers of masculinity studies argued, “masculinities are configurations of practice within gender relations but requiring a structure that includes large-scale institutions and economic relations over and above the face-to-face relationships and sexuality” (Connell, 29). Hence, there is a solid network of power, institutionalized, closing and cloistering all genders, and men derive much of their power from this network, hardly able to recognize, they themselves are also victims to it. The argument that men have lost their power and privileges when compared to their prior status in the institutions of power is valid but the crisis “from within”, needs to be analyzed as well. Following several clusters such as “work, education, the family, sexuality, health, crime and representation” Edwards draws a rich portrait of the masculinity in crisis (from eithin) thesis. The position of men in these clusters not only matters to their place in the power hierarchy but also causes definitions of masculinity to change. Minyeli Abdullah’s story starts from his childhood in the village and quickly expands to a discussion of masculine standards of the traditional Arab culture. Several of the clusters mentioned above are observed in the novel as complex fields of discussion. Abdullah grows into manhood in a deeply patriarchal society. He is the single child of his family and he loses his father at a very young age. He lives with his mother on very limited resources. Minye, his hometown, is representative of a culture of decadence, which took the country refuge; Hekimoğlu refers to the atmosphere as “airs of Paris” in which money rules, love for homeland is forgotten and Islamic morality is looked down upon. At school, a “modern” female teacher intimidates Abdullah, and this event serves as the catalyzer of the series of events that form the novel. Hekimoğlu dresses the attack of the female teacher with sexual and sadistic overtones: the teacher somehow has a crush on Abdullah, she asks him a question and hits him afterwards, and yells at him when he starts to cry. Abdullah tries to suppress his anger but finally answers back with a counter attack and hits back his teacher. Abdullah’s fight with his female schoolteacher is a metaphor, which shows that the discussion of Islamic masculinity in Egypt —and also in Turkey—is almost always intertwined with independence movements, cultural frustrations and anxieties regarding modernization. Abdullah not only fights with a rude teacher, but he fights against everything she symbolizes: sexually aware women, who are products of Western style education and the institution of school, which protects and advertises Western ideas and life styles, both of which overall cause the decadence in Egypt. It is very important to see that Abdullah constructs his manhood, in front of other men (fellow students) by showing a woman who “the real master” is. This fight brings an end to his school years, and in the rest of the novel, Abdullah gives the perfect example of becoming an autodidact —someone who educates himself outside of school. Islamic magazines serve as his starting point and Abdullah puts himself in a direct relationship with God. With such a twist, Hekimoğlu, from the very beginning of the novel, draws an alternative route to Islamic men, binding ethics and morality with the Qur’an instead of Western style schooling. Abdullah moves to Cairo in search for better opportunities, gets married with a girl pre-arranged by his mother, and has two children—in the blink of an eye; there is hardly any emotional detail provided in any part of this story. The novel quickly moves into Abdullah’s maturation in Islam, as Hekimoğlu draws the portrait of a man of dedication, who grows into a domestic master and a religious leader, and starts to educate people at his surroundings in regular evening meetings at his house. In these initial parts of the novel, especially after his marriage, Abdullah is a “positive hero” who supplies the patterns to emulate to men in his surroundings. People ask his opinions on “female slavery in Islam,” or whether “marrying several women” is permitted. Abdullah gives long explanations and examples from the life of Prophet Mohammed, turning much of the novel into a textbook of Islamic lifestyle. The rehabilitation that comes with marriage is also interesting and should be carefully examined. In the bonds
- 251. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 237 of marriage, strict gender roles become the major markers of compliance with the principles of Islam. Although his wife Sevde’s name is not mentioned in the initial parts of the novel at all, she mirrors the religious message Abdullah preaches: “Muslims in Egypt are suffering because they are getting away from Islam”. Sevde appears as a persona only after one of Abdullah’s evening lessons is interrupted with the sudden raid of the police to the house, and Abdullah is swept away from his power. She is an obedient figure, a woman dedicated to her house, showing implicitly what the category of the non-man signifies. The policemen, who likewise the modernized female teacher appear as sadistic personalities, detain the participants of the meeting, and treat them with verbal/physical abuse and torture in the office. Abdullah’s victimization is narrated clearly as emasculation, when compared to his earlier situation, because he obeys the officers and he loses his position as the guardian and maintainer of his dependents (his mother, wife and children) because of his detention. Although he dresses him as the leader of the family in the institution of marriage with strict gender roles, Hekimoğlu seems to be aware that conditions might bring change to gender roles. Hekimoğlu draws a complete lack of power in the figure of Abdullah in front of the policemen, but he does not mock or criticize Abdullah’s emasculation. Abdullah’s emasculation becomes a sign of his victimization, which is almost celebrated by the writer. Hyper-masculinity is not limited to the policemen; the modernized female schoolteacher is likewise a hyper-masculine figure because of the physical attack she performs. This, in the mind-set that forms the story, is a result of Westernization. Such figures illustrate that state, with its institutions such as school and police appears as a challenge to Islamic lifestyle in Egypt. After 79 days in isolation in a cell, Abdullah is taken to the court, and rejects all accusations in there, defending himself as a believer of Islam, but nothing more. The court postpones the case, and this time instead of a single cell, Abdullah finds himself in a prison full of petty criminals. These parts of the novel give the perfect chance to compare and contrast Abdullah’s masculinity with other men. Hekimoğlu gives dimension to stories of ordinary men in masquerades of power and violence, which are busy with dirty jokes and money to make visible Abdullah’s peculiar traits that make him different. Similar to his schoolmates, these men make Abdullah’s Islamic masculinity more appealing. It is important to note that Abdullah does not necessarily stand for “hegemonic masculinity” neither before his arrest nor when sent to prison. Abdullah is “weak” in terms of physical power, when compared to his cellmates. He is poor. He feels the suffering of those less powerful than him, which complicates his place at the power hierarchy. In prison, Abdullah lives on stale bread, prays and becomes the major attraction in his cell with such a low profile. Meanwhile, his wife asks for a divorce to be able to go back to her father’s house and take care of her children with financial support from her family. Abdullah gives her the divorce she asked for. While he loses his wife, he gradually gains other dependents, as his cellmates become his disciples and form Abdullah’s new family. They start asking him several questions on Islam, sit and listen to him for long hours, collect food among themselves and serve him. Abdullah delivers the food to another poor cellmate who is in need, showing dramatically that he—still—is “the maintainer”. With his intellectual traits and excellence in Islamic morals, Abdullah is elevated to a hegemonic status in terms of his masculinity, despite all the emasculation that comes with his lack of money, family, freedom or power. This paradoxical hegemony, the consent of regular criminals for Abdullah’s climbing up to the top of the hierarchy is because of Islam. Abdullah preaches a life of fullness and richness but lives on very limited resources. He denies power, but uses it to continue preaching and hence builds a paradoxical hegemonic masculinity. Prison fails to make a difference in Abdullah’s views. In the second meeting of the court, he
- 252. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 238 defends Sheria, but he is released shortly afterwards with several other prisoners as King Faruk falls from political power, and gets replaced with General Necip. Going back to Minye, Abdullah witnesses the melodramatic death of his mother who experiences a shock after she sees him and finally comes to Cairo in a helpless mood. During all these developments, there is another important submissiveness visible in Abdullah’s masculinity—one to God—that does not include any emasculation at all and that brings him back to the position of the “positive hero.” In his encounter with the police, and later the judge, even when he learns that he is to be brought to the court with an appeal to death sentence, Abdullah keeps his faith in and submissiveness to God. When he finds himself all alone with his friends and family scattered in different parts of the country, his belief in God gets even more intensified. The latter parts of the novel examine Abdullah in his myriad of attempts to unite his belief with a business and a lifestyle, and hence give us the chance to move to the primary cluster that defines masculinity: work. Abdullah first works as a carrier at the port, than starts a small business on textile, earning more than he needs, and transferring the extra money to those in need, helping poor children to continue their education. This metaphorical breeding, is another twisted addition to Abdullah’s paradoxical hegemonic masculinity, as it is-in a way- very feminine. Abdullah initiates contact with members of the Muslim Brotherhood (İhvan- ı Müslimin) but he is critical of them in their support for Colonel Abdünnasır. When Colonel Abdünnasır replaces General Necip, he sends several members of the Muslim Brotherhood directly to prison. Abdullah visits them in prison, and comes out with the idea of revitalization of the Islamic brotherhood via establishing collective businesses. As another melodramatic twist re-connects Abdullah with his wife and children by chance, Abdullah remarries Sevde and resettles as the master of his family. He starts working on his great project of uniting Muslim businessman. Behind this great project is also another discussion of submissiveness. Hekimoğlu lectures, at length, on why Muslims should not be submissive to Western powers, Jews, and non-Muslim minorities in Egypt. In Hekimoğlu’s perspective, there is not a critical look at capitalism; but a criticism of consumerism is visible. The Islamic cooperative is—in a sense—a rehabilitation of Western style capitalism, with Islamic norms of social care. As the novel advances to a complex discussion of Islam and capital, a more detailed examination of masculinity becomes visible. To make money is necessary and there is nothing wrong to try to make more money, but in Abdullah’s view the excess should be properly used. Properly here defines the use of money for the collective good, either by sharing it with the needy, or by using it to advance Islam in the country. The contradiction, however, arises in relation to the power that comes with money. Money can be treated in certain ways, but Hekimoğlu seems in contradiction with himself about the use of power. After his lawyer and judge send a letter to Colonel Nasır about Abdullah, praising his life and personality, Abdullah happens to find himself as the governor of Cairo. His sudden jump at the top of the power hierarchy brings new complexities. He turns into an angry manager from a figure critical of authoritarian manners and power abuse. When brought to his attention, Abdullah orders a young thief, bohemian son of a member of the parliament who stole from his family to amuse his girlfriend, to be beaten for two days, without giving the idea much of thinking. Here the major questions beneath the crisis of Islamic masculinity surface as Abdullah fails to make up his mind on how to cope with beliefs, norms and lifestyles that are not Islamic. How can Muslim man organize lives fittingly to Islamic norms when they are institutionally surrounded by non-Islamic patterns and styles? How should they treat violators of Islamic rules? Abdullah’s decision to use physical force against the young thief comes as a natural outcome of his thinking as “the governor”, and marks an important turn in the novel. Governorship brings the submissiveness required by the religious mind-set in contradiction with the necessary “hegemonic
- 253. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 239 masculinity” to keep things in order and Abdullah does not refrain from power, to obtain order. The member of the parliament, however, contacts Colonel Nasır and forces Abdullah into resignation, finally forcing him to return to textile business. Despite his self-enforced hegemonic masculinity, Abdullah finally is emasculated once again by the agents of power. Since Hekimoğlu does not deepen the enigma of the transformation of a man who lives on stale bread and daylong praying into a violent aggressor, Abdullah’s crisis of authority becomes only partly visible. Abdullah reinstates himself back in the position of a religious leader, and keeps informing men in his surroundings in a peaceful manner, as if he had not been the power holder. Even high police officers come and ask his opinion. Hence he swiftly passes to the intellectual side of the hegemony, from the physical side. Abdullah’s project eventually grows into an Islamist cooperative, and the cooperative decides to send him off to United States, for Abdullah to bring new trade opportunities. The trip to USA borrows certain details from Hekimoğlu İsmail’s life as a member of the military. It is also interesting to see how an Islamist writer presents the United States considering the rise of anti-Americanism in Turkey during the late 1960s. It is in this trip that for the first time in the novel, the narrator becomes critical of the protagonist: Abdullah initiates discussions with Americans about religion, success in trade etc. and attempts to gather information about American culture, but the narrator punctuates that Abdullah takes notes of only the positive things he has seen in the States. Since the narrator also keeps silent about the negatives, the novel suggests an uneasy relationship between Egypt/Turkey and the United States but does not elaborate on it. Abdullah returns from his trip to USA with a to-do list of twenty-one items. According to him, the secrets of US economical success is hidden in their commitment to their religion. “Young Christians Union” consolidates commitment of new generations to the religion. Abdullah does not see any similarity between the “real” West, symbolized by USA, and the “imagined” West, symbolized by the “Westernized” Eygptians. As soon as he comes back to Cairo, he takes action and summons Muslim small-capital-holders to unite their capitals. These small-capital-holders establish a huge factory and a banking system that excludes profit. When Abdullah starts to give speeches to Islamist college students, this establishment gives scholarships to them. Abdullah’s son, Bilal, constructs the Young Muslims Union at the university and joins the war fought at two fronts against communism and faulty “Westernization”. Abdullah continues to preach together with his son Bilal, who becomes target to a hate crime toward the end of the novel. Communists kill Bilal instead of Abdullah, and the family falls into pain and grief. Hekimoğlu does not provide any dramatic detail of the grief, and opens up another thread of stories instead. Abdullah decides to take his wife Sevde to a trip to “ex-Ottoman countries”, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, for her to have some peace of mind. This trip gives the narrator the chance to comment on Turkish versions of Islamic masculinity as Abdullah and Sevde meet a young man, Mete during their visit in Sultanahmet mosque3 . Mete and his wife, the younger couple, try to measure themselves on Abdullah and Sevde, to see if they fit Islamic norms or not. Later when they move to Iran and Pakistan, Abdullah and Sevde also continue to be role models. Hence Hekimoğlu does not give a fuller picture of Islamic masculinities, by providing images of Islam in different countries but he pushes Abdullah forward as norm, which other masculinities should comply with. The trip to ex-Ottoman countries hints the hidden agenda of the novel. Abdullah and Sevde’s trip includes Pakistan and Iran — Iran is a gateway to Pakistan for them—both of which have never been 3 Mete is a student at medical school, and towards the end of the novel he appears as the writer of the manuscript of Minyeli Abdullah, which consists of the real-life stories of Abdullah and Sevde.
- 254. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 240 Ottoman lands. Hekimoğlu, refers them as ex-Ottoman countries and even builds “imagined communities” in them ready to accept Abdullah and Sevde as role models. The route Abdullah and Sevde draw in the so-called “Ottoman lands” interestingly excludes non-Sunni parts of the empire, such as Albania. Members of this “imagined Sunni community” welcome the couple with arms wide open. Abdullah and Sevde does not need a translator to speak with local Muslims. There is no hint in the novel on whether they are speaking English or Arabic, except in Turkey, Mete, the young Turkish medical school student whom the couple meets in Sultanahmet, says that he is not able to speak Arabic unfortunately but he can speak English. Sevde, the narrator adds, can speak “Ottoman Turkish” and Mete’s wife can speak “the accent of Ottoman” so that they can understand each other4 . Although Ottoman Turkish and Arabic are two totally different languages, the narrator depicts Ottoman Turkish as a master language that every Muslim can readily understand. Although Abdullah’s being intended to be “the norm” of Islamic masculinity causes Hekimoğlu to attempt to dress him with a sense of clarity and completeness, Abdullah is far from such a unity, and falls into crises at certain times of conflict. When the couple comes back to Cairo, for example, Abdullah faces with the difficult situation of handling a man of deceit who lives in his quartier. As believers of Islam, Abdullah and his disciples all agree that the man, who treats his family lowly and lives extra-marital relationships is a potential threat to their values and life-styles but they fail to make up their mind on how to handle him. Abdullah argues the beast should be “killed, beaten, wounded,” and leaves his disciples perplexed. He leaves the meeting as an angry man but arrives at his home with high fever and dizziness, and immediately sends a note to his disciples suggesting them “to find a better solution, to attempt to make him confess his crimes”. Abdullah’s disciples kidnap the man, beat him and force him to testify all of his wrongdoings. The novel closes as the man reunites with his wife and the micro setting is cleared of non- Islamic manners and lifestyles. The Islamic context of the novel reaches a political climax as war erupts between Egypt and Israel. This war not only concludes the novel but also serves as a paradoxical unity of genders separated during the entire novel, as Abdullah and Sevde both chose to die in Egypt, fighting in the name of Islam. Abdullah in the final episodes turns into an Islamic fighter—a superhero—who defends the airport with a single machine gun, all alone. His friends and disciples also follow him, while communists reject to fight against Israel. The Islamist impulse symbolized by Abdullah, to return back to basics of Islam, finally faces its key question in the end of the novel. The true Islamic position, Abdullah finally decides, is to fight with the non-Islamic, even when this requires spilling blood. Abdullah’s crisis in masculinity hence ends with his heroic death while trying to defend Islam. Hekimoğlu finds submissiveness to God as the leading principle of Islamic masculinities. The tricky part in this equation is to decide “to use or not to use” brute force to turn people to Islam for them to develop a similar submissiveness. Considering Abdullah’s dedication to fight the beast—let it be consumerism, secularism, communism, Westernization or Israel—, his outbursts of anger and frustration in leadership positions (i.e. when he was the governor, or the top person to decide how to deal with men who do not fit their view of Islamic masculinity), and finally his taking a gun in his hands to battle in the war, it is possible to say that there is an oscillation in this novel in terms of masculinity, as Abdullah struggles to find his place in Islam as a man. 4 The inherent criticism in these lines is targeted to the language reform by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which transformed Turkish people’s link to their Ottoman past.
- 255. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 241 In the story of Abdullah’s victimization, “hegemonic masculinity” appears as a uniform bloc, consisted of men and women-products of modernized state institutions (the school, the police, the bureaucracy, even the parliament). This is party due to Hekimoğlu’s tactics to build a positive hero, who grows bigger in his victimization. Abdullah’s victim position, in the beginning, is created as the impasse of a Muslim man, a dedicated believer, in front of hegemonic structures powerful than himself. Abdullah’s search for power, however, also indicates that the bloc has certain cracks on it, which Islamic masculinity hopes to use, in order to trespass to the hegemonic side. 60s Egypt is quite similar to 60s Turkey in this sense, where Islamic masculinities found a fertile ground to express themselves, in the freedoms of the 1961 constitution, against secular, nationalist and communist ideas. As “Westernization” from top to bottom creates its own crises in 60s, men in Egypt and in Turkey fight for hegemony, and Islamic men form their own fronts. Abdullah is born into traditional Arabic masculinity and he is expected to have a Westernized training at school to become an officer of some kind, eventually to serve the Egyptian bureaucracy. He rejects both trajectories to build the third: Islamic “reformist” masculinity. It is possible to argue that, until the war between Egypt and Israel erupts, Abdullah attempts to form an agreement between his Islamic ideals and developing capitalism and bureaucracy in Egypt. Hence it is questionable how much of a reformist Abdullah is, since it is possible to refer to his search for power, rather positively, as a search not threatening the regime, but trying to rehabilitate it. Only when the system outgrows and forces its subjects to chose sides, and when it becomes unable to be a part of it, Abdullah gets out of the victim position, turns into a hyper-masculine gunman defending an airport against attacks by heavy artillery, obtains “hegemony” in his annihilation. So, Hekimoğlu tries to negotiate the cracks on the hegemonic bloc of masculinities, but eventually, he builds the third way for Abdullah as dying to defend his religion, giving light to the impasse of Islamic masculinity. Masculinity in Islam is made of contradictory acts of power—protective, fighter, submissive—and even in Abdullah’s saint-like figure there are inconsistencies; the oscillation is visible. Hence it is possible to witness “a masquerade of masculinities” in the greater aggregate of Islamic masculinity. Considering Hekimoğlu’s intentions to write a guidebook, a manual for Muslim men and women in the form of a novel, and the greater political agenda of gathering Sunni Islam under the roof of neo-Ottomanism, as suggested by Abdullah and Sevde’s trip, it is possible to say that Hekimoğlu does not expect to produce a text that serves critical exploration of masculinities at all. But, against his wills, he touches upon the paradoxes of Islamic masculinity, via Abdullah’s earlier crises for power against modernized teachers, brutal state agents, bohemian burglars and their guardians etc. all of which form the seeds of Abdullah’s final turnover, his transformation to a fighter profile in the conditions of war. The crisis, as such, can be enlarged to men in general since the decision to go to war as soldiers—in the name of God or nation—defines a broader territory of men, than that of Egypt. Here in this Islamic version of this discussion, it is interesting to note that Hekimoğlu approves battling in war as the ultimate form of dedication not only for men but also for women. Hence, overall, the novel Minyeli Abdullah suggests that “holy war” is something that all Muslims must adhere. This does not “solve” men’s crisis at all; it even deepens it, as the definition of man still depends on the definition of non-man, and a strict hierarchy among them is still expected. Gender difference becomes irrelevant only next to death, which becomes a practical threat both on men and women. Acknowledgement This paper is part of a TÜBİTAK project (114K137) on military coups, trauma and literature.
- 256. Çimen Günay-Erkol andUğur Çalışkan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 242 References Connell, R. W. The Men and the Boys. Oxford: Polity, 2000. Print. Çayır, Kenan. Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey from Epic to Novel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print. Edwards, Tim. "Crises, What Crises? Sex Roles Revisited." Cultures of Masculinity. London: Routledge, 2006. Print. Hekimoğlu İsmail. Minyeli Abdullah. Istanbul: Timaş, 2013. Print. Kalyoncu, Cemal A. "Hekimoğlu İsmail Ile Söyleşi." Aksiyon. 1 July 2002. Web. 29 Sept. 2015. <http://www.aksiyon.com.tr/portreler/biz-hz-isanin-hayatini-mi-yasiyoruz_508872>.
- 257. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 243 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies How Male University Students Perceive Women? Defne Erzene Bürgina* , Selin Bengi Gümrükçüb ab Izmir University, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Turkey Abstract Inequality among men and women is not a problem that can be solved solely by the empowerment of women. Undoubtedly, increasing the level of education and employment among women would contribute to the weakening of patriarchal structure of the society. However, it is also of significant importance to raise awareness among men about gender equality. In order to raise awareness more effectively among men on gender equality, firstly we need to have knowledge on how men perceive women. This study reveals the data based on a survey of 57 questions conducted in Izmir with 432 participants composed of male university students studying in five universities. The questions asked aimed at measuring how the male university students, considered as representatives of educated segments of the society, perceive women. First part of the study reveals demographic information about the participants like age, birthplace, department etc. The first results of the survey are as follows: 199 participants do not believe in equality of women and men. Out of 432 participants who were asked if married women with children should work, 170 participants responded negatively and 265 participants see motherhood as a career. The premier responsibility of women is claimed to be a good mother by 196 participants, to be a good wife by 200 participants and to have a good career by 46 participants. 287 participants would not want their wife/girlfriend to work in a male dominated sector. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Male students, women, gender equality, education, patriarchal structure * Corresponding Author: Defne Erzene Bürgin. Tel: +902322464949 E-mail address: defne.erzene@izmir.edu.tr
- 258. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 244 1. Introduction Gender equality is a basic principle of democracy and it is essential for sustainable development. Empowerment of women is an integrated part of the empowerment of society. Currently, gender roles continue to influence crucial individual and societal decisions on several issues including family formation, education, career, employment and labor arrangements. All these decisions definitely have an impact both on the society and the economy. Thus, it is of significant importance to define these roles and find solutions to the obstacles in front of gender equality. Turkey, as a developing country, is not isolated from the current debates on gender equality. In fact, equality of women and men has been an issue in Turkey since the foundation of the Republic in 1923. The young republic introduced Civil Law and granted social and political rights to women through reforms aimed at strengthening women’s participation in education, politics, labor etc. Actually, the country was one of the first to give women the right to vote compared to its European counterparts. Most of the reforms achieved in the first years of the Republic granted several rights to women. Women and men are also constitutionally equal in Turkey. With regards to the international regulations, Turkey signed and ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1985, and lifted the initial reservations against CEDAW’s Articles 15 and 16 in 1999. In 2000, the country signed the Additional Protocol to CEDAW and signed the Optional Protocol (of CEDAW) that allowed the right of individual petition to the Convention’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2002. More recently, thanks to the EU accession process, Turkey introduced further reforms concerning gender equality in the country. In the accession process the main points which were debated in relation to gender equality have been the legal regulations that should be made in the Constitution, the Civil Code, and the Penal Code, as well as the issues of violence against women and low participation of women to labor (Baç, 2012: 4). In line with these developments regarding the international regulations, Turkey established some new organizations concerning the gender issue. The General Directorate of Women’s Status (Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü, KSGM), which was established in 1990, upon the ratification of the CEDAW, is one of them. KSGM is established in order to realize the goals of eliminating all forms of discrimination against women. Besides these institutional developments, women’s movement that flourished in the aftermath of the military coup that was held in September 1980 contributed in reaching “a certain level of gender sensitivity” and some goals in sectors like health and education have been achieved (KSGM 2008). 2. The state of art and recent debates in turkey Despite all these developments, the data on gender issues clearly demonstrate that the situation is far from deserved; the present status of women in society clearly reveals the existence of gender inequalities in contemporary Turkey. According to the Human Development Reports of UNDP (2014) Turkey ranks 69th among 150 countries in the Gender Equality Index, and 125th out of 142 according to the Gender Gap Report 2014 published by World Economic Forum. Gender equality is not achieved in the political arena: the share of women Members of Parliament (MP) was less than 5 per cent in the Parliament until 2007. Women gained 98 out of 550 seats in the parliament in the elections held in early June 2015; a number that corresponds to about 18 per cent. The share of women in labor and employment in Turkey followed different paths during the Republican period. For example, women’s employment participation rate was 81.5% in 1923 and declined to 56.2% in
- 259. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 245 1965. As of 2013, this rate was 31.2%. While this is major setback compared even to the 1960s, this rate is around 30% since the 1970s. In addition, it is observable that there is an amelioration since the second half of early 2000s, as the rate was 23.3% in 2010. However, it is obvious that these shares are far from desired and needed, especially compared to Turkey’s European counterparts. As it is mentioned in a 2013 report by Women’s Labor and Employment Initiative Platform, “even though Turkey is one of the selected emerging economies among OECD members, Turkey is ranked last with respect to women’s economic participation” (KEİG 2013). Departing from this fact, increasing women’s participation in labor force is listed as one of the targets of the Tenth Development Plan (2014-2018) approved by Turkish Grand National Assembly in 2013. It is aimed to increase women’s participation rate to 34.9 % and women employment rate to 31 % (Ministry of Development, 2014). In this regard, thanks to the efforts of the women’s movement and the EU accession process, policymakers developed some concerns about increasing women’s share in labor force. However, there are some scholars who claim that these concerns are not as “innocent” as they seem. According to the advocates of this idea “the main motivating factor has been the re-invented advantage of the policies targeting the ‘disadvantaged population’ in fostering economic development. A declining fertility rate coupled with a larger working-age population has stimulated the economy, expanding production” (KEİG 2013). Thus, women, as an “untapped pool of labour resource” would be used for further economic growth (KEİG 2013). Whatever the reason is, it is obvious that there have some recent developments in Turkey to urge further participation of women to labor force. In early 2015 the government introduced new incentives package to encourage working women to have more children. Prime Minister Davutoğlu declared that: “Mothers [working in public office] will be able to continue to be promoted in their positions even in their unpaid leave after birth. We will also make arrangements for part-time work for mothers. After the end of maternity leave, mothers with one child will have the right to work part-time for two months, mothers with two children for four months, and mothers with three or more children for six months. They will receive full wages while working part-time” (Hürriyet Daily News, January 8, 2015). While this incentive presents some benefits for working mothers, it also received critical comments from some actors advocating gender equality. Debates about the role of women in society were further fueled by the statements of Minister of Health, Mehmet Müezzinoğlu, which he made during his visit to the first baby born in 2015. He said during his visit that, “Mothers have the career of motherhood, which cannot be possessed by anyone else in the world. Mothers should not put another career other than motherhood at the center of their lives. They should put raising good generations at the center of their attention” (Hürriyet Daily News, January 1, 2015). He repeated his idea on January 2nd , 2015 when he was asked to comment about earlier statement: “Motherhood is indisputably a career” (Hürriyet Daily News, January 2, 2015). These statements also created disputes about the issue. In sum, it is clear from all these data and debates that “the incorporation of a gender equality perspective into the areas of employment, power and decision-making, research and budgetary and financial policies has also not been realised” in Turkey (KSGM 2013). In order to incorporate the gender equality perspective, it is of significant importance to raise consciousness of men about the issue. Indeed, raising awareness and sensitivity of men to achieve gender equality is listed as one of the means of promoting gender equality in some documents. For instance, “defining the roles of men in achieving gender equality and raising their awareness” is listed as one of the objectives of the relevant public offices in Turkey in order to empower women and promote gender equality, in the National Action Plan Gender Equality 2008-2013 published by the General Directorate on the Status of Women (KSGM 2013). In this regard, the KSGM is the responsible
- 260. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 246 agency, along with a number of collaborating agencies and institutions, for defining to roles of men in achieving gender equality. With regards to employment, it is possible to claim that “women’s general social and economic development is closely related to their participation in the labour force, because employment not only provides women with economic independence, but also increases their confidence and social respectability and improves their position within their families” (KSGM 2013). As mentioned above, women in Turkey have low shares in labour force. It can be stated that the traditional patriarchal society and family structure which is shaping women’s role in society is one of the main reasons of this fact (Erzene-Bürgin 2015). The sexist division of labor within the family which is based on the patriarchal ideology considers household affairs and childcare as the main responsibilities of women (Erzene-Bürgin 2015). This is one of the reasons why the women are kept away from the labor market, “even though there is no legal discrimination in the participation of women in the labour force” (KSGM 2013). In addition to the above mentioned factors where men shape the gender (in)equality, one should mention the fact that the majority of the policymakers in Turkey are men. For example, according to the 2015 data, around 65 % of all public employees in Turkey are men (Devlet Personel Başkanlığı). Thus, it is quite clear that in order to establish gender equality in Turkish society, a certain level of consciousness among men should be accomplished. However, in order to raise awareness more effectively among men on the issue, firstly we need to have knowledge on how men perceive women. 3. Presentation of data Departing from these points, this study aimed at measuring how the male university students, considered as representatives of educated segments of the society, perceive women. Considering the fact that those who are studying in universities now will be the policymakers in the near future, it is important to understand how today’s youth considers women’s role in society and to what extent their ideas are shaped with the above mentioned debates. The study uses a dataset based on a face-to-face survey of 57 questions, conducted in Izmir with 432 male university students studying in five different universities, both public and private. For this study, we evaluated the results from 33 questions regarding the demographic information about the participants and their perceptions about women labor, the role of women in the society, etc. First part of the study reveals demographic information about the participants including age, birthplace, marital status, and the departments that students are studying at. The average age of the participants of this study is 22. Our respondents are representing the seven geographical regions of Turkey: 201 are from the Aegean region, 66 are from Marmara region, 56 from Central Anatolia, 31 from Mediterranean, 21 from Black Sea, 19 from Southeastern Anatolia, 10 from Eastern Anatolia. 6 participants were born abroad, and 22 chose not to respond to this question. With regards to the faculties that they are enrolled at, the participants cover a broad range: 148 are studying economical and administrative sciences, 99 studying engineering, 60 are enrolled to faculties of science and literature, 36 are studying architecture, 27 studying different forms of communication, 25 studying law, 15 studying medicine, 14 are from vocational schools. 8 of the participants did not respond to this question. Table 1 shows the responses to two general questions about gender equality and women’s status in Turkish society: Do you believe in gender equality? Do you think that women in Turkish society are due respected? The results are striking as around 42 per cent of the participants do not believe in gender equality. While more than half of the male university students in Izmir believe in gender equality, 42 per cent is a significant share. On the other hand, 74 per cent of the respondents believe that Turkish women are not due
- 261. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 247 respected in Turkish society. This is a high share compared to Turkey’s European counterparts, as “around three in five Europeans (62%) think that inequalities between men and women are widespread in their country” (Eurobarometer, 2015). Table 1. Do you believe in gender equality? Do you think that women in Turkish society are due respected? (in %) Gender Equality Women in Turkish Society Yes 56.7 24.5 No 42.4 74.3 As mentioned before, Turkish women’s participation in labor force is not as high as desired. Departing from this fact, we asked three questions to our sample on whether single, married and married with children women should work or not. Results are presented in Table 2. According to the table, male university students’ opinions about women’s participation in labor force are changing according to women’s marital and familial status. While around 89 per cent of the respondents are positive about single women’s employment, this positive share decreased to 80 per cent about married women, and decreased significantly to 62 percent about women married with children. Considering that these young males might build up families soon, this is a significant number. Table 2. Should single, married or married with children women work? (in %) Single Married Married with children Yes 88.7 80.1 62 No 11.1 19.4 37.5 We asked two additional questions to those who responded positively to the question whether married women should work or not: Should married women work part or full-time? Would you still want your wife to work even if you had enough financial sources? The results are presented in Table 3. Around 27 per cent of the respondents think that married women should have a part-time employment. And, around 28 per cent think that their wives should not work if they have had enough financial sources. Thus, it is quite clear that men’s ideas about women’s employment are closely linked with financial concerns. Around 69 per cent of the respondents answered this question positively, quite often mentioning that under the current financial conditions it would not be possible to live a desirable life with only one salary supporting the family.
- 262. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 248 Table 3. Should married women work part or full-time? Would you still want your wife to work even if you had enough financial sources? (in %) Employment status Employment under enough financial sources Part-time 26.9 Yes 68.8 Full-time 55.5 No 28.3 Motherhood as a career has been a topic of debate in recent years in Turkey. As mentioned above, the declarations of some high-rank officials, such as the Minister of Health, contributed to these debates. In line with these debates, we wanted to see how the future officials and policy-makers composed of today’s youth consider motherhood. Although respectively around 89, 80 and 62 per cent of participants responded positively to the question whether single, married and married with children should work, 60.4 per cent of surveyed reported that they consider motherhood as a career. This share is higher than the share of 37.5 per cent who said that women with children should not work. The idea that women are not suitable for certain jobs and tasks is a common idea in Turkey. Following this fact, we traced if our sample male university students studying in Izmir agreed with this common idea or not. The results clearly demonstrate that young males agree with this idea, as 65.5 per cent of our respondents responded positively. Only 31.7 per cent of the respondents declared that they disagree with this statement. While the majority of our respondents agreed with the statement that some tasks/jobs are not suitable for women, when they were asked about certain positions and sectors such as serving as an executive, taking part in politics and becoming soldiers, they gave different answers. As shown in Table 4, 20 per cent of the respondents think that women should not act in an executive position. The share increases to about 25.7 per cent when the participants were asked if women should engage in politics. It is a common sociological standpoint in Turkey to think that women cannot drive, and 37.3 per cent of our respondents seem to agree with this, as they said women should not go in traffic. The most striking data is on the engagement in military activities. About 80 per cent of the respondents said that they would not want women to enroll to military. Table 4. Should women work/take role/engage in executive positions/politics/military/ traffic? (in %) Executive Politics Military Traffic Yes 78.7 73.8 19.4 61.8 No 20.1 25.7 79.9 37.3 With regards to question regarding having a women supervisor 30.8 per cent of the participants declared that they would not like it. On the other hand 68.3 per cent said that they would not care. It is important here to mention that most of these who responded positively to question said that they do not have the right/opportunity to choose under the current economic conditions. With regards to the marriage related issues, the participants were also asked if they do help their mothers/wives at home. On the contrary of the general idea that men do not help women in household stuff, 70 per cent of the participants responded that they help their mother/wife at home. In a related question,
- 263. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 249 they were asked if they would consult their wives in the future, given that most of them are single, when making a decision about household affairs. The results are more striking then the former question: 88 per cent responded positively as shown in Table 5. This demonstrates that even if some do/would not help to household affairs, they would consult to their partners while making a decision. Table 5. Do you help your mother/wife at home? Would you consult your wife about household affairs in the future? (in %) Help mom/wife at home Would you consult your wife Yes 70.6 88.2 No 28.2 11.1 In relation to the above questions, the participants were also asked if it is important for them that women obey their husband. Significantly enough, 80.1 per cent of the respondents said yes, it is important for them that, women, their future wives, obey their husband. Only 19 per cent said no. Less than one per cent said women should respect their husband. In addition, it has to be said that among the 19 per cent who said no, some clearly mentioned that they did not find the word “obedience” proper for such a question. In a follow-up question, the participants were asked about the primary responsibility of women. They were asked to choose between three options: being a good wife, being a good mother and having a good career. 43.3 per cent of respondents said that the primary responsibility of a woman should be being a good mother, while 42.6 per cent answered a good mother. In total, around 85 per cent sees motherhood and being a good wife as major responsibilities and duties. Only around 9 per cent sees women’s primary duty as having a good career. In May 2015, Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals decided for the first time that women will be able to use only their maiden surname after marriage, citing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (Hürriyet Daily News, May 30, 2015). On the other hand, it is quite often witnessed in Turkey that men are not going well with this idea. To see what young university students think on the issue, we asked a question whether they would be disturbed or not if their future wife would like to use only her maiden name after marriage. It seems that even if there would be enough legal changes, men still prefer their wives to use their name as family name. 60.9 per cent of the respondents declared that they would be disturbed. Some claimed that they would be embarrassed in the eyes of their families. However, 39.1 per cent of the respondents said that they would not have a problem if their wives would use their maiden name after marriage. In another question regarding family formation and marriage issues, participants were asked if it is desirable that women limit their social life with their newly formed families. The majority of the respondents, 70.8 per cent, said that this is not desirable. Still, 28.7 per cent agrees with the idea that women should not have a social life outside of their own families. It is also crucial for gender equality that men take responsibility in childcare. In order to see what young university students, the fathers of future, think about childcare, they have been asked whether they would help their wives in taking care of children. About 90 per cent of the participants said they would help their wives, while 10 per cent would not. In a follow-up question, regarding the recent debates about paternity leave, the participants were asked whether they would use the opportunity after having a child. About 70 per cent said that they would take paternity leave. This high share shows that, if they had the opportunity, men would take further role in childcare. In another set of questions we tried to explore further the views of men about women and their social and business lives. Making a reference to the recent debates of mixed houses where young men and women
- 264. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 250 live together, the participants were asked if their ideas about a woman would change if she had lived with a man without being married. 60.2 per cent of the participants said that their ideas would change, while 39.1 per cent said that their ideas would not change. In the follow-up questions, we asked about the business life of married women. Firstly, the participants were asked if they would be bothered if their wife/girlfriend would work in a male-dominated sector. 60 per cent of the respondents said that they would be bothered, while about 39 per cent would not be bothered. In another question the participants were asked if they would be bothered if their wife/girlfriend would have a higher salary compared to them. While 43 per cent said they would be bothered, 56 per cent declared that they would not be bothered. 4. Conclusion Empowerment of women is an integrated part of the empowerment of society and a basic principle of democratic societies. As a developing country with regards to both its economy and democracy, it is obvious that Turkey should pay attention to the issue. However, it is shown by both official and unofficial statistics that Turkey is not meeting the standard criteria on the issue. It is obvious that the social and cultural factors contribute to this situation. While the women constitute about the half of the population in Turkey, it is quite common to that men rule the country with regards to politics and economics, of course with some exceptions. This is caused by the above mentioned social and cultural factors. Thus, it is significantly important to understand how men, as the main policy makers, consider women’s role in the society. Departing from this point, this paper aimed at determining how male university students in İzmir consider women. The results of our survey showed that 42.4 per cent of our respondents do not believe in gender equality, while 74.3 per cent think that women in Turkey are not due respected. This result might be evaluated as male university students are not well-informed about what gender equality is. Participants were also asked questions about women’s employment. It is claimed that paternalistic social structure of Turkey is one of the reasons of low share of women in labor force. Women are expected to take more roles in the family and childcare and married women are expected to get “permission” from their husbands to work (Erzene-Bürgin 2015). This shows us that there are more expectations about married women. The results of our survey reveal same kind of approach in young men. While about 89 per cent of the participants responded that single women should work, the share decreases to 80 per cent when they were asked about the employment of married women and to 62 per cent about married women with children. In addition, 27 per cent of the participants said that they would prefer married women to work part-time, and 28 per cent responded that they would not want their wife to work if they have had enough resources. More significantly, about 60 per cent of the respondents consider motherhood as a career. Besides, being a good wife and mother are considered as the major duties of women. These data approves the suggestion that women’s low participation in the labor force is caused by the cultural roles that are attributed to women in the society. Even young, educated men consider a woman’s major role as a mother, who would stay at home and take responsibility of the family. The results of our survey also demonstrated that male university students are still within the boundaries of traditional societal standpoints. For example, about 60 per cent of the participants responded that they would be disturbed if their future wife would like to use her maiden name after marriage. In a similar manner, 50 per cent of the male university students in Izmir declared that they would like to have a boy if they would have only one child in the future. These data shows that even young males living in Izmir cannot overcome the societal traditional standpoints. Given that they are getting educated in several universities,
- 265. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 251 thus constituting the educated segments of the society and the future policymakers, these points are becoming more significant. On the other hand, there is still a significant share of men who thinks that certain duties and tasks are not suitable for women. With regards to the issues regarding family, the respondents portrayed a more positive image, as about 90 per cent of them said they would help their wives in childcare and about 70 per cent would use paternal leave after having a child. This is an important finding that would suggest more legal action on the issue. In addition, about 70 per cent responded that their wives should not limit their social life with their families. However, on the contrary of this “helpful” husband image, 80 per cent of the respondents declared that they find it important that a wife to “obey” her husband. It is currently a very well-known fact that Turkey is an underdeveloped country considering the gender equality issue. Since the problem is caused by the social structure of the country, the solution should be looked for there too. Especially the way men consider women should be clearly understood, as most of the problems are caused by them. The results of this study clearly demonstrate that there is still so much way to go in this regard. Coming from different economic and social backgrounds and studying different fields, the young men in Izmir are not far from the historical, traditional figure of women. It can be claimed that there is only progress with regards to the familial issues, such as consulting wife about household affairs and helping her in childcare. Given that the participants of the survey are university students, it is clear that the problem cannot be solved by higher education. Consciousness about the issue should be raised in the very early years of education, as it is clear that social norms and rules still inhibit the promotion of gender equality between men and women. Thus, further steps should be taken to raise awareness among men on gender equality. References Devlet Personel Başkanlığı. http://www.dpb.gov.tr/tr-tr/istatistikler/kamu-personeli-istatistikleri (accessed on July 25, 2015). Erzene-Bürgin, D. (2015). “Working Women in Turkey – A Comparison with EU Member States”, Paper presented at Women and Politics in a Global World International Congress, İstanbul Aydın University. Eurobarometer. (2015). Gender Equality Report, http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender- equality/files/documents/eurobarometer_report_2015_en.pdf (accessed on July 28, 2015). Hürriyet Daily News, January 1, 2015. “Mothers' only career should be motherhood, Turkish health minister says”, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/mothers-only-career-should-be-motherhood-turkish- health-minister-says.aspx?pageID=238&nID=76360&NewsCatID=341 (accessed on July 28, 2015). Hürriyet Daily News, January 2, 2015. “Motherhood not a career for men: Turkish health minister”, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/motherhood-is-not-a-career-famous-turkish-writer-elif-safak-says-in- reaction-to-health-minister-.aspx?pageID=238&nid=76409 (accessed on July 30, 2015). Hürriyet Daily News. January 8, 2015. “Turkish gov’t unveils incentives to encourage more procreation”, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-govt-unveils-incentives-to-encourage-more-procreation- .aspx?pageID=238&nID=76675&NewsCatID=338 (accessed on July 30, 2015).
- 266. Defne Erzene Bürginand Selin Bengi Gümrükçü / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 252 Hürriyet Daily News, May 30, 2015. “Top court allows married women to use only maiden surname”, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/top-court-allows-married-women-to-use-only-maiden- surname.aspx?pageID=238&nID=83191&NewsCatID=341 (accessed on July 30, 2015). KEİG. (2013). “Women’s Labor and Employment in Turkey. Problem Areas and Policy Suggestions II”, http://www.keig.org/content/english/keig%20policy%20report%202013.pdf (accessed on July 30, 2015). KSGM. (2008). National Action Plan on Gender Equality. http://www.tr.undp.org/content/dam/turkey/docs/demgovdoc/UNDP%20- %20National%20Action%20Plan%20on%20Gender%20Equality.pdf Ministry of Development. (2014). “The Tenth Development Plan, 2014-208”, http://www.mod.gov.tr/Lists/RecentPublications/Attachments/75/The%20Tenth%20Development%20Pla n%20(2014-2018).pdf (accessed on July 30, 2015). United Nations Development Programme. (2014). Human Development Report http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-4-gender-inequality-index World Economic Forum. (2014). Gender Gap Report. http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap- report-2014/rankings/ (accessed on July 27, 2015).
- 267. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 253 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies The Alienation Problem of “Women” in the Market Derya Güler Aydına* , Bahar Araz Takayb a Hacettepe University, Department of Economics, Turkey b Başkent University, Department of International Trade, Turkey Abstract This study focuses on the assumption that some difficulties experienced by women can be analysed with reference to the institutional framework of the capitalist system. In addition, the concepts of alienation and conspicuous consumption are the basic analytical tools of the study. A group consists of women who are employed in high-ranking (mostly executive) positions in the private sector is the selected as sample. Within this aim, in the first section of the paper, concept of the alienation will be examined under the theory of Marx and Veblen. In the second section, the results of the study will be discussed. The interviewed women who work under competitive conditions in the market confirmed our initial argument that capitalism alienates the individual in general and women in particular © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords:Capitalism, market, alienation, conspicuous, consumption, women * Corresponding Author. E-mail address: dgaydin@hacettepe.edu.tr
- 268. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 254 1. Alienation and human nature In the process of capital accumulation the capitalist system leads to the alienation of the individual from the product of his labour and himself. While Marx was examining the issue of alienation, he studied the existence of the individual in capitalist society and argued that labour turned into a commodity becomes an object in capitalist property relations. In doing so, in capitalist society the individual is trapped in the interrelations of goods produced for exchange as a result of market relations and is objectified. In this sense, Marx’s analysis of capitalism describes not only the “dehumanization” of the capitalist system but also of the individual who exists in the system and of the creator of the system. The concept of alienation, described as the dehumanization of the individual in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1976), appears in two different forms. The first is the alienation of man from nature, isolating him and creating a second nature in the cultural-social sphere. The form of alienation that refers to isolation from nature is considered positive regarding man’s existence and development. The second form of alienation is inherent in the capitalist system and specific to it man is alienated from his nature/labour/product. In other words, man is alienated from his labour, social relations, world, and life. Although the means of production as private property lies behind alienation, this situation is more crucial issue in capitalist society in where particularly the labour force becomes a commodity. Under the capitalist system, because the worker is separated from the means of production, labour turns into a commodity bought by the owner of capital in the market. At the end of the production process, the worker owns only a certain part of the products of his labour, enough to reproduce itself, and the owner of the capital seizes the surplus value produced. Thus the surplus value is the result of private property on the one hand and alienation and alienated labour on the other hand. In this respect, the relation of alienation In Capital I, Marx attempted to explain the material basis of man’s alienation from his own nature with the concept of commodity fetishism, which emerged from market relations. According to Marx, once the individual begins to work for others, his labour takes a social form. As soon as labour gains a social quality, in other words, when the product is produced for the market, the product establishes a relation with the labour itself. Marx calls this process commodity fetishism, which occurs as soon as labour begins to produce commodities, commodifies itself, and becomes controlled by “commodity fetishism” (Marx, 1990:165). In fact, commodity fetishism is a natural outcome of alienation. Under this system, man’s alienation not only from the products of his labour but also from his own labour and his total physical and mental capacities, is the result of his transformation into a “commodity”. In other words, the alienation process in capitalism leads to the processes of “fetishism” and “reification”. The individual involved in these two processes is a dehumanized individual deprived of his individual efficiency, in brief; he is a lost individual under rational rules. Therefore, alienation is the first stage of dehumanization under rational capitalism. Within this framework, “commodity fetishism” comes first in Marx’s criticism of capitalism as a mode of production. With commodity fetishism the physical and social existence of men is produced via the relation between commodities, and thus individuals are unable to understand their physical and social existence. According to Marx and Engels, “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life”(Marx-Engels, 1970: 47). In other words, under capitalism, a specific mode of production, the process of alienation leads to reification and fetishism. Due to the reduction of relations between men to relations between commodities, the relation between commodities explains the social aspect of the individual. Although private property is a phenomenon encountered in different periods, private property under capitalism is differentiated by the alienation it causes. To summarize, according to Marx, labour is divested of its human qualities under capitalist social
- 269. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 255 circumstances, and turns into an object. Capitalist society estranges the man from his human values, which means that it transforms man within the context of its capitalist values. Although Veblen does not mention the concept of alienation as much as Marx, he creates his own unique theory. Veblen reflects alienation from two different and interdependent viewpoints. Private property and the labour instinct depend on alienation from the outset, but his theory of the leisure class and conspicuous consumption are also related to it. In his article The Beginnings of Ownership (1898) Veblen discusses the emergence of private property, and evaluates this concept differently from previous economists. According to Marx, ownership emerges with appropriation of surplus labour and creation of surplus value. According to Veblen, the emergence of private property is anthropological. Veblen discovered the roots of ownership in the behaviours of warriors/ hunters in the primitive age. Veblen emphasized that men owned objects even during the peaceful ‘savage’ period. (Diggens 1977: 136). The stages of social evolution, which Veblen conceived in Darwinian fashion, present the emergence of ownership, in which the concept of alienation is prominent. Veblen distinguishes four main stages of evolution: the peaceable ‘savage’ economy of Neolithic times; the predatory ‘barbarian’ economy in which the institutions of warfare, property, masculine prowess, and the leisure class originated; the pre-modern period of handicraft economy; and finally the modern era dominated by the machine (Veblen, 1973(1899): 32). In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1973 (1899) Veblen described the development of Western human society in where two factors gained usefulness as an indicator of social superiority: property or its excessive consumption and the exemption from industrial occupation (Flohr 1998). Along with predatory culture, tangible evidence of prowess in the form of trophies finds a place in men’s thought habits as an essential feature of the paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the raid, comes to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent force, and as a consequence aggression becomes the accredited form of action (Veblen, 1973 (1899): 30). The new structure brings slavery in where free work ends, ownership begins. Veblen argues that, “The oldest form of ownership is seizure of women by the tribal chiefs” (Veblen, 1973 (1899) :33). Ownership appeared with the seizure of the women as slaves, who did daily chores for men. Ownership begins with slaves and continues with the seizure of objects produced by slaves (Edgell and Townshend, 1993). The slave owners do no physical work and spend their time waging war, hunting, and in religious observances, causing work to become associated with slavery and lower status. Hatred of work leads to corruption of the workmanship instinct. Because ownership begins with captivation of slaves and continues with seizure of objects produced by them, private property appears not from alienation of labour but from the actions of barbarians in predatory societies. In this respect, Veblen differs from Marx: Possession and exploitation have nothing to do with the labour theory of value (Diggins 1977:123). Marx argues that alienation results from private property, but in Veblen the conditions of alienation are not formed in the context of private property. Alienation emerges as a consequence of social habits and institutions eroding the workmanship instinct (Veblen, 1946). Ownership results from a desire to be stronger than others during the transition from a peaceable ‘savage’ society based on work to a system where ‘barbarism’ dominates, not from need. In this respect, ownership is based more on the things that affect rivals in the social hierarchy than beneficial things. This condition leads to the formation of alienation within the context of conspicuous consumption. Alienation occurs when men are jealous of each other’s efficiency. Men use their labour not to produce but to attain higher status. Because attaining higher status involves acquisition and accumulation of goods, man is alienated from
- 270. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 256 peaceable ‘savage’ life. Workmanship is no longer production; acquisition of goods and idleness are the determining social values (Veblen, 1973 (1899)). In this culture, jealousy of status and meaning and value determined by competition are attributed to commodities and consumer goods involving animistic qualities, but not to the production process (Diggins, 1977). In brief, conspicuous consumption and idleness and acquiring and using objects and time extravagantly began to find a place in the central values of the society. Veblen’s critique of capitalism emerges as conspicuous consumption and the alienation of the individual who loses his instinct of workmanship. Conspicuous consumption is symbolic because it serves the individual to exhibit himself in society. Workmanship is only a means to acquire wealth (Veblen, 1946). In developed capitalist societies, conspicuous consumption, wealth, and property represent power more than need and are the main goals in life. More consumption is indicative of belonging to a higher class. A desire to own things is displayed to develop jealousy in other individuals, - consumption is a means of displaying the buyer’s superiority. Consumption that goes beyond necessity gets ahead of production, creating a condition that underrates work. In a capitalist society, a social class excluded from production and work activities expresses itself in conspicuous consumption. This class tries to display its power not by working, but by spending (Veblen, 1946). In conclusion, Veblen, who explains alienation on the basis of conspicuous consumption and loss of the workmanship instinct, argues that there are two basic weaknesses that lead to the alienation of man. The first weakness is the impact of animism and the second and most important is society’s contempt for workmanship. Man’s salvation from alienation depends on acceptance of the workmanship instinct as the most valuable phenomenon. The machine age enables salvation from this alienation. In Veblen’s view, the machine and the engineer who designs it is productive, profitable and less lavish lifestyle and the society that sustains them best, develops (Veblen 1973 (1899)). 2. The Spiritual Journey of Goddesses of Capitalism This study focuses on the question of what lies behind the growing interest in “personal development” among women in recent years. In this context, the fact that the women who show this tendency are usually employed in high-income jobs is the main factor that drives one to think that the incentive behind this growing interest may be rather socio-economic than personal. From this point of view, this study questions the existing economic and social structure and bases its analysis on the concepts of alienation and conspicuous consumption. The selected sample group consists of women who are employed in high-ranking (mostly executive) positions in the private sector. Within the framework of this study, in-depth interviews were conducted with eleven women. In addition to questions about their demographic and social identifications, the respondents were asked about the alienation of women induced by the market society and their consequent inclination towards personal development activities. Moreover, the ways in which conspicuous consumption, which also involves personal development activities, reproduces alienation were inquired about. During the interviews, the respondents expressed in their own words negative views about capitalism. “Well, [it is] a game in which we are wholly absorbed, such a relentless spirit...” (Interview No.1, Istanbul) “I mean capitalism is a system in which money is above everything else.” (Interview No.3, Istanbul) “Capitalism is war and rivalry.” (Interview No.5, Istanbul) “...[it is] struggle, definitely struggle” (Interview No.8, Ankara) “Capitalism is private business...” (Interview No.10, Ankara)
- 271. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 257 “Capitalism is a natural system...Everyone is equal in terms of business life and in terms of human rights, but we have differences in creativity...” (Interview No.11, Ankara) The respondent composition regarding age, education and marital status is as follows: As mentioned before, eleven interviews were conducted, seven of which were held with women who are working in Istanbul and four with ones working in Ankara. Of these eleven women, three are between the ages of 33 and 40 and nine are between 40 and 48. As for the marital status, seven women are married, two are divorced, one is engaged and one is separated. All the interviewed women but the engaged one have children. All of the women had graduated from Turkey’s prominent universities, a considerable number of them having received graduate degrees as well. The interviewees hold executive positions in financial investment, banking, health and construction sectors. Thus, the interviewed women are well-educated and belong to a high-income group. In sum, most interviewees are well-educated married women who are above middle age and belong to a high-income group. 3. General Overview of the Selected Group Women Age Marital status Graduation Residing Interview 1 48 Divorced METU Istanbul Interview 2 40 Married METU Istanbul Interview 3 36 Married ITU Istanbul Interview 4 38 Married METU Istanbul Interview 5 40 Divorced A University in USA Istanbul Interview 6 33 Engaged ITU Istanbul Interview 7 43 Live separately METU Istanbul Interview 8 41 Married ITU Ankara Interview 9 47 Married METU Ankara Interview 10 44 Married ANKARA Ankara Interview 11 48 Married METU Ankara Source: Author’s calculation One key interview question regarding the alienation of women was “How many hours a day do you work and how much time can you allocate for yourself in a day?” The interviews revealed that almost all respondents worked long hours (10 hours and above) and could not allocate much time for themselves during the day. “I work 10 hours a day” (Interview No.4, Istanbul) “...I usually work 9 hours, but it sometimes exceeds 10 hours.” (Interview No.5, Istanbul) “...Since I work Saturdays, I need to deal with the daily obligations on the one hand, and maintain a household and a private life, and take care of the children on the other...”(Interview No.10, Ankara) “...I work until 1:00 p.m. When I leave the office I try to take my mind off work, but the e-mails and phone calls I receive at home won’t let me.” (Interview No.11, Ankara) Based on these accounts, it was deduced that women who work long hours cannot allocate time for themselves and even when they have spare time they tend to spend it with their family and children in particular. This outcome reinforces the argument put forward in this study that there is a link between
- 272. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 258 aspirations for personal development and a busy work life. Within this scope, the respondents were asked what they did to rest their body and soul. Personal development activities ranked first among the responses to this question. Yoga, meditation, NLP and breathing therapies in particular were very popular among the interviewed women. As a matter of fact, the respondent in Interview No.10 in Ankara stated that yoga hours had been initiated at her workplace, and that such a therapy method that could be utilized during lunchtime or out of working hours was very rewarding for women in particular. “Your body and soul cannot rest. I also take care of the corporate dealings of the firm. We have initiated yoga hours for our female personnel at the firm...I will not be able to participate this evening because I need to work; I cannot leave [the office]. It will be very good if we can boost such activities. Everyone in the firm needs this...Fatigue has accumulated.”(Interview No.10, Ankara) When the other interviews are also taken into consideration, it is seen that personal development, or centuries-old Buddhist philosophy in other words, has been taken up and commercialized by the market as nearly the sole instrument for self-transformation, self-tranquilization and self-relaxation. Women who participate in personal development activities to avoid the “fatigue and busyness” caused by working under intense competition in the market are themselves becoming “instrumentalized”, and in a way alienated, as they contribute to the introduction to the market of another commercial instrument. “You can detox by doing exercise, or feed your soul by, I don’t know, going to a (book) fair. You can socialize or do something else... I think the economy works this way. A new sector [the respondent refers to personal development courses] is being created; I believe it is like a soap bubble to burst soon. First a need is invented and then they say this is the cure.”(Interview No.2, Istanbul) While we refrained, at the beginning of the interviews, from asking in an explicit manner the question of whether the market/work life alienated them, all respondents, when asked directly, stressed without hesitation that they were alienated from their lives and their identity, especially as a woman. Their role as a mother, through which they experience their female identity to the fullest, provides them with a space to breathe. On the other hand, however, this role lays a burden on them. The respondents expressed that they were in a disadvantaged competitive position vis-à-vis men holding similar positions in business life and that they needed to assume extra responsibilities to overcome this disadvantage. “Well, the work place is a battlefield for him (man); there is nothing against his nature there. We, on the other hand, are in a struggle for existence outside of our nature. What does this do to us? This makes us neither a man nor a woman.” (Interview No.1, Istanbul) “Here, there are many colleagues who are fathers. But they never have a sick child or a parents’ meeting as an excuse because mothers have to take care of these... There is no fair division of labour in our society; women have to display full performance both at work and at home. This is seen as something capitalism entails.” (Interview No.2, Istanbul) The responses of the interviewees to questions about capitalism, working hours and work place competition presented qualitative differences between the interviews held in Istanbul and those held in Ankara. Undoubtedly, the geographical, cultural and commercial peculiarities of the two cities lead to differences in their social and economic structures. This difference became evident when the respondents in Istanbul made more pungent comments on capitalism than those made by the respondents in Ankara. It is interesting to observe that the same system may function in divergent ways across different geographies within the same country, though still having disruptive effects throughout. A similar situation manifested itself also in the responses to questions about alienation and conspicuous consumption.
- 273. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 259 In this study, the issue of alienation is directly associated with the system and conceptually linked to conspicuous consumption. The conceptual framework laid out in detail in the first section finds its expression in the respondent statements presented in this section. Defined as the estrangement of the individual from her/his nature and self, alienation arises basically from the functioning of the capitalist system. This concept, which can be seen as referring to the process of the commodification of labour, was explicitly reflected in the words of the interviewed women. When asked why they engaged in conspicuous consumption, the respondents asserted that they saw it as an “instrument of power” independent of need. In fact, this power was perceived by these women as a haven when long hours of work made them feel powerless. “You know, we are being so much estranged from our true self and essence. An estranged person becomes alienated. Alienated from herself/himself and from her/his position in society...” (Interview No.1, Istanbul) “It alienates women and women become overwhelmed... Capitalism now starts to take its toll on women from very early ages on.” (Interview No.4, Istanbul) “...pretend relationships and insensitive thinking of today... No matter how ambitious and competitive people might be, they are looking for sensibility and transparency.” (Interview No.5, Istanbul) “....A conception of achievement void of the individual prevails in the nature of capitalism. Success lies within you, discover yourself, find the ones to enable your self-realization, and then lose yourself...” (Interview No.6, Istanbul) “...I mean the person you see from the outside is not the same person inside because I see that we live with an image...” (Interview No.11, Ankara) As mentioned above, the interviewed women engage in personal development activities in order to get away from their busy work life and avoid alienation. Another type of activity that they engage in is conspicuous consumption, even if they are not conscious of it on a conceptual level. Their responses to the question of what they make of conspicuous consumption support the argument put forward in this study. We may cite other striking quotes from the interviews as examples. “What is the reason? I think people try to become happy by consuming. Because you need to relieve your soul in some way... But when you look around, if women work very long hours and do not have time for themselves, what can they do at most? The easiest way is to go to a shopping mall and buy something. I think this is how they gratify and fulfil themselves.” (Interview No.2, Istanbul) “It seems somewhat the case. Because the woman works, earns money and feels good when she buys something for herself. Because she thinks she deserves it; it is like a reward perhaps...” (Interview No.5, Istanbul) “....Business life, working women in the first place. But there are women who consume even if they do not work. And this goes on because this is how the system persists; it relies on consumption...” (Interview No.6, Istanbul) “... Shopping may be a sort of therapy for women. Women spend a lot of money for their children too. They want to show off...” (Interview No.7, Istanbul) “Conspicuous consumption means brand addiction... I have brand addiction too, I am addicted to bags.” (Interview No. 9, Ankara) This study, which originated from a curiosity about the reasons behind the popularity of personal development activities among women with high income and educational levels, proves that personal development is also a form of conspicuous consumption, and that they both serve to reproduce the system despite being viewed as means to escape alienation.
- 274. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 260 4. Conclusion This study examines the alienation of well-educated women who are employed in the private sector with high incomes. It rests upon the assumption that all the observed difficulties experienced by women can only be analyzed with reference to the dynamics/institutional framework of the capitalist system. The interviews conducted in Istanbul and Ankara revealed that the interviewed women converged in that they could not spare sufficient time for their personal life due to long working hours, but diverged with regard to the systemic explanation of this problem. We believe that this differentiation stems from the differences in intensity of work load and urban dynamics in Istanbul and in Ankara. Despite this discrepancy, it can be asserted that the woman groups interviewed in both cities clearly illustrated the contradiction in capitalism. Women who live in big cities in Turkey (Istanbul-Ankara), have high educational levels and work in the private sector with high incomes are the ones employed in the most competitive and destructive sectors of the market society, and the interviews unambiguously demonstrated that material rewards in no way amount to personal happiness. This is because these women spend most of their income on spiritual activities and by this way they attempt to eliminate their dissatisfaction. They, on the other hand, have a significant role in the reproduction of the market society. Indeed, the analysis of the socio-economic conditions of this group of women reveals the contradiction of the market society. When we assess the interviews held in Istanbul, it can be said that our initial argument regarding capitalism, alienation and trainings on spirituality, or personal development in other words, has been confirmed. The parameters in the Istanbul interviews that explicitly reinforce our argument manifested themselves in a less direct way during the interviews held in Ankara. When compared to Istanbul, Ankara is a more static, less competitive and more public-sector-dominated city. These characteristics have also been reflected on the business environment, and by extension, on the lives of the women working in the private sector in Ankara. Even though the capitalist system and the process of alienation were defined in less assertive ways during the interviews in Ankara, we may claim that the interviews held in both cities support the arguments put forward in this study. In other words, the interviewed women who work under competitive conditions in the market expressed first-hand the destructive bearing of the system on themselves, and in this regard, confirmed our initial argument that capitalism alienates the individual in general and women in particular. The selected cities (Istanbul and Ankara) display different characteristics in terms of geography, demography and the dynamics of business life. Although these peculiarities lead to differences of opinion among the respondents concerning the manner and degree of capitalism’s negative impact on the individual, the bottom line indicates a structure that generates alienation for “women” in both cities. References Araz Takay B. And D. Güler Aydın, “What if Marx and Veblen Met”, Economic Annals,, Volume LIX, No.202. 2014: 131-156. Diggins, J.P. “Animism and the Origins of Alienation: The Anthropological Perspective of Thorstein Veblen” History and Theory 16, no. 2 113-36 (1977). Edgell, S. ve J. Townshend. “Marx and Veblen on Human Nature, History and Capitalism: Vive la Difference” Journal of Economic Issues vol: XXVII no: 3, 721-738 (1993).
- 275. Derya Güler Aydınand Bahar Araz Takay / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 261 Flohr, Birgitt. “The Treatment of Female Characters in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth in the Light of American Gender Theory and History in the Early Twentieth Century.” Essay for King’s College London. Jan. 1998. 1-13. Marx, Karl, 1844 El Yazmaları, Sol Yayınları, Ankara, 1976 (1844). Marx, Karl Capital, Volume I, Penguin Books, London, 1990 (1867). Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume III, Penguin Books, London, 1991 (1894) Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Maurice Dobb. (yay.), New York: International Publishers. (1970) Marx, Karl - F. Engels The German Ideology, C. J. Arthur (Yay.), New York International Publishers, (1970). Veblen, T. B. The Theory of the Leisure Class, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1899 (1973). Veblen, T. B..The Instinct of Workmanship: And the State of the Industrial Arts, , New York: The Viking Press, 1914 (1946) Veblen, T.B “The Beginning of Ownership”, American Journal of Sociology vol: 4, (1898)
- 276. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 262 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Women’s Bodies as First Colony: A Study in the Hybrid Feminist Personal E. Burcu Gürkan* Istanbul Şehir University, Core Courses Depatment, Turkey Abstract One of the most powerful insights (and motivational forces) for feminism has been the second-wave slogan “The Personal is Political!” This is the moment where the women’s movement erased the seemingly insurmountable division/boundary between the private sphere and the public sphere and in so doing brought into focus the intertwined relationship between the socio-political realities and women’s lives. This paper takes these insights from second-wave feminist theory and examines how these interactions have helped to establish and form identities in third-wave feminist theory with a grounding in post-colonial theory and ultimately what this means for current feminist epistemology. I examine what it means to be a woman who is Canadian with Turkish heritage, and is bi-lingual, bi-cultural, and bi- situated, where in either location (Turkey or Canada) the dominant culture does not recognize the elements/traces of the other culture. How this knowledge fits into the epistemic analysis of the relationship between the Self and the Other as specifically related to women and women’s bodies forms the theoretical groundwork for my examination of the philosophical analysis of silence and identity from a feminist perspective. It is a dichotomous relationship that I examine: the subject must understand herself as subject, yet the framework from within which this activity takes place can only see her mostly and primarily as an object, thereby forcing her to see herself as an object and subject at the same time. I contend that these can be useful moments to analyse these issues from within the discourse itself. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women; identity; epistemology; body; postcoloniality * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-444-4034-9849; E-mail address: burcugurkan@sehir.edu.tr
- 277. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 263 1. Introduction “The Personal is Political!” has been a rallying cry for a significant portion of the history of the women’s rights movement. As such, I would like to start with a little background information: I am Turkish by heritage and Canadian by birth and education; I carry sensibilities of both cultures in what is often an uneasy relationship. I am bi-lingual, bi-cultural, and bi-situated, and I have found that in either location (Turkey or Canada) there have been many instances where the dominant culture does not recognize the elements/traces of the other culture. All of which started me thinking “How does one define oneself as a Self, when one is insistently defined as an Other by the dominant discourse or culture?” True to feminist form, I will be using two personal anecdotes to analyse this issue. By Canadian standards, I have an unusual name. Despite the fact that Canada is a nation of immigrants, my name is not usually instantly recognizable in terms of its ethnicity. For instance, just before someone tries to read my non-Anglo name in public (e.g. a doctor’s office) in North America, there is always a moment of silence, of seemingly utter unintelligibility, and that is the exact moment of my grasping that it is me they are looking for. Yet this seems contradictory, as for all intents and purposes there is nothing there. It is the unexpected nature of this presence of absence that creates a space in which unfailingly I have known that it was me who was being searched for. This space, in its unintelligibility for an Other, has provided some intelligibility for myself (although nothing that strictly speaking resembles a traditional formulation of knowledge). A similar instance of non-recognition happens in Turkey, when people hear me code-switching linguistically, depending on which language they hear first, they are almost always amazed by how proficient I am in the other language. So if they hear me speak Turkish first, they are surprised by how well I speak English (and vice-versa). My answer in either case is always the same: that it is not at all surprising because I am native in both languages. To most this is unacceptable because the dominant discourse of Turkish identity does not allow for this sort of pluralism (although Turks from Germany seem to be the exception to this issue). Nevertheless, in either instance it is the moment of unintelligibility that I am interested in. Does this unintelligibility constitute an apparent text? That is, can nothingness be understood as text, and if so, how can it be read? This nothingness can be seen as a consequence of certain type of speech act: the outward manifestation of an unintelligibility. In other words, if identity (whatever identity that is being discussed) necessarily requires an Other for its very definition, and in this case of an unintelligibility, the lack of definition is the very crux of the means for defining identity, then this nothingness can be read as a special kind of text. As such then, due to the special nature of this text, i.e. that it is unintelligible, it might be possible to also see it as more or less uninscripted. It can also be seen as a Derridean subversive reading of text (here the text being nothingness) where the space as uninscribed opens up the possibility of interjecting my inscription, a meaning of my own making, so to speak. The moment of silence creates a space where although demarcated by absence there rises the possibility of difference. This space is the possibility of a disruptive space that can contribute to understanding oneself in the face of an Other. It is possible that this absence, this lack of a text, is what provides a space to create an identity. In the penumbric space that is created between the unintelligibility on the part of the speaker, here the subject, and the knowledge of that unintelligibility on the part of the object (functioning as both an object and a subject) come together to create a space where the formation of an identity that does not neatly fit into the folds of society can surface and reveal itself.
- 278. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 264 2. Two Empirical Studies: Moments of Erasure A recent study published in Psychological Science offers us an interesting experiment on self- representation and objectification of women’s bodies. In the experiment, students are asked to give an oral introduction of themselves in one of three modes (randomly chosen) to an unseen listener. The sex of the listener was indicated to these students at the beginning of the experiment. Of the three modes – videos of their faces, or their bodies, or audio only – the most interesting results (although not unexpected) were from the interaction that the female participants displayed when the video was of their bodies and their interlocutor was male. Women who were in the body condition and thought they were interacting with men spent less time talking than participants in all other groups. In addition, the majority of women disliked the body condition, indicating that they found having their bodies gazed at aversive. (Saguy, Quinn, Dovidio, Pratto, 2010, p. 178-182) The authors of the study set out to examine the impact of objectification during social interaction. The aim was to analyze how ‘objectified targets’ presented themselves to others. The study’s conclusion makes the claim that: [w]e demonstrated that when a woman believes that a man is focusing on her body, she narrows her presence in the interaction by spending less time talking. The impact of objectification on talking time occurred independently of gender self-stereotyping, which suggests that attempts to behave femininely did not account for this effect. It is important to note that the majority of women disliked the body condition, indicating they found having their bodies gazed at aversive. In addition, when freed from this experience, and from visual inspection more generally (i.e., in the audio condition), women did not talk less than men. (Saguy et al., 2010, p. 181) This is indicative of self-silencing, an erasure of self, so to speak. The authors theorize different reasons for how and why this happens, not the least of which is the possibility that women’s cognitive preoccupation with objectification reduces their ability to speak or have an intellective interaction (!). (Saguy et al., 2010, p. 182) While it may be dangerous to draw gross generalizations from one study, the implications of this sort of inquiry seems intriguing from a feminist point of view in that it could lay the groundwork for some sort of empirical foundation for further investigation. Not only does the study gesture towards the fundamental importance and weight of the body in relationality, it underscores the primacy of gender in this relationality. The reduction to an objectified entity – in this case simply the body – rendered the subjects less likely and less able to both present and represent themselves. This is an obvious case of direct objectification and its concomitant results, namely a silencing of self. The question that now arises is what this implies for less direct moments of objectification. What happens when we, a la Foucault, are reduced to disciplined bodies? And more significantly, what does this mean for women who often are no more than their bodies? A comparable, but earlier, experiment reached similar conclusions, albeit with an explicit feminist grounding and methodology using objectification theory (Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, Twenge, 1998, p. 269). Objectification theory argues that the “cultural milieu of sexual objectification functions to socialize girls and women to treat themselves as objects to be evaluated on the basis of appearance” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270). Taking their cue from Sandra Bartky’s preliminary definition in
- 279. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 265 Femininity and Domination, the authors characterize the occurrence of sexual objectification “whenever people’s bodies, body parts or sexual functions are separated out from their identity, reduced to the status of mere instruments, or regarded as if they were capable of representing them” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 269). In other words, individuals become equated, and conflated, with their bodies; they become objectified, becoming objects for the surveillance (and pleasure) of others. This type of sexual objectification happens both in terms of “actual interpersonal encounters” and through the ubiquitous presence of mass media where studies have shown women are far more often the target of objectifying treatment” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270). Objectification theory holds that, then, culture socializes girls and women to internalize an objectifying perspective on their own bodies, an effect that they have termed “self-objectification” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270). In this they mean that “individuals think about and value their own body more from a third- person perspective, focusing on observable body attributes (e.g., “How do I look?”), rather than from a first-person perspective, focusing on privileged, or non-observable attributes (e.g., “What am I capable of?” or “How do I Feel?”)” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270). Self-objectification, as the authors argue, can result in an “array of intraindividual psychological consequences,” such as the vigilant monitoring of the body which can lead to an overconsumption of mental resources being devoted to constant bodily attention (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 270-271). Given that the authors are attempting to study the mental consequences of female bodily objectification, they surmise that self-objectification as a result of pervasive and insidious sexual objectification can lead to a decreased capacity to perform mental activities (in the experiment they used advanced mathematical tests to evaluate these mental activities) (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 271). The experiments tested three hypotheses: that self-objectification would lead to 1) body shame, the consequence of which was restrained eating; 2) diminished math performance; and 3) being more evident amongst women rather than men (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 273). The first experiment asked the participants to fill out questionnaires both before and after they were randomly assigned to either wear a sweater or a swimsuit. They were then also requested to sample some chocolate chip cookies Although the authors claim that while their “data do support the existence of self-objectification, they do not speak to its origins” (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 281). Their results conclude that experimentally induced self- objectification does in fact correspond to both restrained eating (due to bodily shame) and poorer performance on mathematics tests in women (rather than men) (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 281). In their discussion the authors reference Iris Marion Young’s phenomenological analysis of the female body in “Throwing Like A Girl.” They argue that: [w]hen girls and women maintain an observer’s perspective on their bodies, Young argues, they simultaneously experience the body as an object as well as a capacity. (Fredrickson et al., 1998, p. 272) Young’s article on feminine bodily comportment does in fact reach this conclusion, she says “the bodily self-reference of feminine comportment … derives from a woman's experience of her body as a thing at the same time that she experiences it as a capacity” (Young, 1980, p. 145). Young maintains that women in culture and society are defined as the Other, “the inessential correlate to man” (Young, 1980, p. 141). And that women, being denied the subjectivity, autonomy, and creativity normally accorded to men, exist in a contradictory position whereby they must, as humans, establish subjectivity, and yet by virtue of their subjugated positioning they also exist as mere object (Young, 1980, p. 141). She ties this to the three modalities of feminine bodily comportment: “ambiguous transcendence, an inhibited intentionality, and a
- 280. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 266 discontinuous unity with [the body’s] surroundings” (Young, 1980, p. 145). These can all be derived from the woman’s experience of her body as a thing. All three modalities, for Young, are rooted in the fact that for feminine existence the body is lived as both subject and object simultaneously (Young, 1980, p. 148). In other words, that which constitutes a crucial aspect of lived experience is/becomes a thing in the world akin to other things in the world. She accedes that any lived body necessarily has a material dimension/existence to it, for “feminine bodily existence, however, the body is often lived as a thing which is other than it, a thing like other things in the world” (Young, 1980, p. 148). In other words, in addition to also being a subject (as a human person) a woman lives her body as object, constantly in a state of disunity and discontinuity (Young, 1980, p. 153- 154). Thus, not only does a sexist, patriarchal society define and register women as body (or mere object), but the parameters within which this society exists necessarily exert an internalization of this point of view on women thus forcing them to exist in a perpetual state of simultaneously existing as both Self and Other at the same time. 3. Self-Knowledge, Women and The Body From a traditional epistemological point of view knowledge qua knowledge is only adequate if it is objectively produced and organized. That is, as a knowable object, theoretically knowledge is accessible by everyone. However, this “everyone” is a very specific type of knower – one who is rational, objective, free from biases and lacks an evaluative or normative perspective (at the very least they should lack an emotionality for the objects of knowledge). I hesitate to argue that the knower lacks any normative perspective because, at the very least, there are judgments being made whether what is being studied is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in terms of its being objective. It is this notion of the “objective” knower which makes for an interesting contradistinction when it comes to trying to access self-knowledge. As that which is sought folds over onto itself as the subject looks at itself as an object, the questions of how identity is formed and how it is informed take a more central position in shaping the way in which this knowledge is sought. 4. Postcoloniality, Identity, and Women’s Bodies The formation of identity with regards to women and women’s bodies seems especially fecund given the positioning of a kind of double othering that women from non-Western nations experience. In particular I have found the postcolonial theory has both the germination of, and the grounding for, an interesting analysis in this respect. The establishment of the Self necessarily involves the marking of the Other. And in non-Western nations, themselves defined as the Other, I argue, it is not simply a case of a reinscription of the Self-Other dialogue where the non-western male is the Self and the non-western woman is the Other: a smaller yet identical unfolding of the Self-Other dialogue re-inscribed onto the non-western relationship. This is also not a position of standpoint epistemology where the oppressed (or the periphery) has a privileged and doubled position as knowing subject. The non-Western, sometimes Orientalized, postcolonial subject and the identity formation of the self, that is first marked as Other and then remarked as Other again (in the case of women), is both different in kind and degree. In other words, the formation of the knowing subject, when she is a woman, is not simply a case of two similar layerings of otherness – one where she is othered because she belongs to a non-Western category and another layer where she is othered again because she is a woman. The negation of the body and Woman’s bond to the body leaves her in this state of palimpsestic limbo where her definition of herself is written for her.
- 281. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 267 It is of course a contentious issue to try to define postcolonialism itself as a term. There are at least two decades worth of debate as to the exact definition of the term, notwithstanding the larger question of what constitutes a postcolonial canon. However, for our purposes here I would like to utilize Stephan Slemon’s definition which is an adaptation of The Empire Writes Back’s definition: Definitions of the ‘post-colonial’ of course vary widely, but for me the concept proves most useful not when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period in once- colonised nations, but rather when it locates a specifically anti- or post-colonial discursive purchase in culture, one which begins in the moment that colonial power inscribes itself onto the body and space of its Others and which continues as an often occulted tradition into the modern theatre of neo-colonialist international relations. (Slemon, 1991, p. 3) The significant terms/concepts that seem most useful are wrapped around the idea of colonial power and its inscription on the body and the space of Otherness. The main aim of postcolonialism is to study the dynamics produced in those postcolonial cultures from varying socio/politico/cultural/economic axes. In its most general terms postcolonial theory is interested and invested in some form of this kind of investigation. In this instance the dynamics of power as they are inscribed on the body, and in particular the discursive body, is a central focus in trying to understand how the non-western women’s Othering is significantly different. How the body is perceived is crucial in the constellation of axes of identity and power which affects the positionality of persons in society. This is especially acute when it comes to women and women’s bodies. Historically there has been an uneasy alliance between feminism and post- colonialism; patriarchy and colonialism are similar in the kind of domination they wield on those who are subjugated; both have been concerned with how representation and language are positioned in terms of identity formation and the construction of subjectivity. The uneasiness stems from the controversies surrounding the legitimacy of who speaks for whom. Moreover, there has been of late a question of prioritization of which form of oppression takes primacy. Despite all of this, gender issues are clearly an important issue when it comes postcolonial problems. The term double colonization has sometimes been employed to talk about how non-western women have been Othered twice: first as belonging to a marginalised group and then Othered again by men in the marginalized group. However, I contend that this explanation does not go far enough. If postcolonialism allows us to understand the body as the site of inscription and the full force of power and domination is played out on the positionality of the body, then it does not seem that far-fetched to extend the argument to understanding women’s bodies in general as having been the first colony. And taking into account the earlier analyses of how identity formation and women’s bodies become relational we can see that subjectivity for women is inextricably bound to a material/social/cultural aspect of what it means to be a Woman. Women’s bodies, then, can be understood as the first colony to be scripted, plowed and plundered; used as resource, site of production and reproduction, reviled and celebrated as things, as conquerors often do of the lands they have seized. 5. Conclusion In other words, if it is the case that their stories are written for those that are Others, then their access to claim different narratives are severely reduced, if not impossible. Alternative narratives are possible but only within the confines of firmly established/constructed structures of hegemony and power. It is into the interstices, the empty/silent/absent spaces that those who are defined as Other place their own narratives.
- 282. E. Burcu Gürkan/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 268 These always already extant structures limit and guide the navigation of the narrative being written/presented/represented. I would submit that the body, in particular for countries like Turkey where Otherness is so clearly inscribed on the body, is an assumed and lived reality. That bodilyness constitutes the starting point for the self is the lived reality of the Other. In cases where the Self is an Other of the Other, the body is/can be the only starting point for positioning oneself as a Self. References Fredrickson, B.L., Roberts, T., Noll, S.M., Quinn, D.M., & Twenge, J.M. (1998). That Swimsuit Becomes You: Sex Differences in Self-Objectification, Restrained Eating, and Math Performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), p. 269-284. Saguy, T., Quinn, D.M., Dovidio, J.F., & Pratto. F. (2010). Interacting Like a Body: Objectification Can Lead Women to Narrow Their Presence in Social Interactions. Psychological Science, 21(2), p.178 –182. Slemon, S. (1991) Modernism’s Last Post. In Jan Adam and Helen Tiffin (eds.) Past the Last post: Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism, New York, NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Young, I.M. (1980). Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Comportment Motility and Spatiality. Human Studies, 3(2), p. 137-156.
- 283. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 269 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Becoming a Gendered Body: Feminist Analysis of Gender and Power Relations Ebru Eren* İstanbul University, Institute of Social Science Department of Women’s Studies, Turkey Abstract The body has been analyzed and criticised as an active and complicated process that embodies certain cultural and historical possibilities. Despite the interest to body sociology which has body politics in its centre is only aroused recently, the body has always been shaped by social processes and power mechanism. To understand the relations between power and body helps today’s society get to know how our gender and sex are constructed. In this paper I focus my analysis on power and gender relations in the lights of Michel Foucault’s works and Judith Butler’s performativity theory. I have tried to debate how different bodies are perceived and controlled and also how gendered body is constructed. Foucault’s idea that the body and sexuality are cultural constructs rather than natural phenomena has influenced Butler and she has analyzed his theory in a feminist point of view and widened and contributed it as saying the body becomes its gender through series of acts. Butler’s approach which partly inspired by Foucault get us to question the links between sex and gender/ gender and desires / showing us how free-floating and flexible all they are. I suggest that once gender and sex are understood as culturally constructed, it is possible to avoid stereotypical form of gender identities as they are subversive and performative. ©2015Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Power; sexuality; performativity; gendered body * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90- 555 -557- 3868. E-mail address: ebrurenn@gmail.com
- 284. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 270 1. Introduction Body is one of the most important factors of social communication. Social life is somehow linked to the relationship between the bodies. It can be said that a body is the mirror of the person. The body has a dynamic pattern that ideologies, religions, genders and sexes, culture, politics and power interact with one another. The body can react, resist or embrace to all these interactions. Body studies, especially sociology of the body as an academic research is relatively new but the body itself has always been shaped by social processes. Therefore, the body is never outside of history, and history never free of bodily presence and effects on the body (Connell, 1987, p.87). Accordingly we may say then that the body is not simply given but is a historical situation which is culturally constructed. In modern society the body is a product of power / political relationships and the body as an object of power is produced in order to be controlled, identified and reproduced (Turner, 2008, p.36). According to Foucault who considered the body as shaped by some certain discourses, the human body is at the center of all knowledge and should be analyzed historically. From Foucault’s point of view as the power is described as productive and constructive, the body, accordingly, in the active process of reconstruction with repeated actions. Following his works, it can be said that power operates by producing knowledge and desire; thus and so desire has a controlling effect on our bodies. 2. The Relationship between Power and Sexuality in Foucault I want to state in advance that Foucault’s concept of power should not be identified with an institution or apparatus that executes hegemony or force. Power is not an institution or a structure; it is not a force that some people have it from the beginning, but it is a name given to a complex strategic status in a society (Foucault, 2013, p.70).The falsity of considering power as an authority that is implemented on individuals by a state may conduce you to misunderstand the concept. Power maintains its existence not by directly having impact on lives but through discourses. As long as power established by the individuals and discourses correspond and subject to the practice, it is consolidated. Power is not restricted to the political influence on an individual but it spreads out to whole life itself. As Foucault stated, power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere (2013, p.69). According to Foucault, both parties should be able to act to the end and there should be reaction and response spaces in order for a relation to be a power relation (2014, p.20). It can be deduced from this statement that Foucault considers power and subject as dynamical entities; besides, the main components of these two concepts should not be stuck into a single attribution. For Foucault, who discusses power through power relations and the effects of these relations, as relations change and transforms power structure also transforms. In sum, subject is never a passive existence that power can dominate; otherwise we would be mentioning of a power established autonomously and by fixed identities. However, Foucault states that power can operate only on free subjects and as long as they are free. Power creates desire, produces knowledge and penetrates deep into the self. Foucault remarks that where there is power, there is resistance and possibility of resistance. In this condition, there is no living space outside of power for the individual because in Foucauldian point of view, power works on the individual that it established and created (2014, p.64) while doing it, it permeates into the entire body, discourse and daily life of the individuals. Foucault explains the direct participation of body to political field (2014): “Power relations directly interfere in the body. It surrounds, seals (marks), trains, tortures it and forces it to fulfill particular duties, participate in the ceremonies and give some signs to its environment.” (p.25)
- 285. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 271 In modern societies, body is not controlled by dominant power but “internalized norms”. According to Foucault, body transforms into a useful power only if it becomes a productive and subordinated body (Butler, 2012, p.276). Foucault refers to two types of power: disciplinary and regulatory power. While disciplinary power centers the body and makes it submissive and useful, regulatory power (emerged in the second half of the 18th century and also named as bio-politics) puts forward people’s lives more than their body. That is to say, especially from the 19th century onwards, disciplinary power’s body-centered politics was replaced by social body constituted by the gathering of a large number of bodies, namely population. Foucault states that body oriented disciplinary mechanisms and population oriented regulatory mechanisms are jointed into each other and both the body based on regulation and population are important in term of being a point juncture. State should know how the individuals experience sexuality so that it can benefit from it in the name of population. Foucault states that economically useful and politically conservative sexual order is established in order to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity and perpetuate the form of social relations (2014, p.33). The reason behind the insistent emphasis on the family politics and heterosexual affairs is to use an individual’s sexuality on the basis of population. Sexuality is no longer controlled by an individual’s desire and it constitutes the most important part of the state’s fabrication machine. Therefore, it is unsurprising for a state aiming reproduction from population to consider sexual affair that breaks the norms as perversity. For this reason, it can be said that sexuality has become political because of its aspects of disciplining the bodies and controlling population. When sexuality is dealt with power relations and considered as being a part of them, it can be determined that instead of being natural source of desires it is a cultural construction (McNay, 2012, p.321). 3. Sexuality and the controlling of the Body Although sexuality has always existed, Foucault expresses that the term of sexuality emerged at the beginnings of the 19th century, which is actually a late period of time. He mentions the necessity of searching for a historical and critical genealogy of the body and the concept of desire. With this point of view, it can be deduced that sexuality is not a natural situation but rather it is an outcome of cultural and historical impacts. Sexuality can be regarded both as a bodily performance and, beyond that, as a concept. Naturally, everyone owns a body and the reproduction of sexuality cannot be realized without the body capacity (Zengin, 2012, p.334); yet, different from sexual action there is also another “sexual” concept meaning internal bodily desire and it is socially constructed. As Fatmagül Berktay stated (2009): “Our definitions, norms, beliefs and behaviors related to sexuality is not self-generated but it is constructed by power relations.Patriarchal power relations, which historically dates back to thousands of years, are not only naturalized and consolidated by state and religion but also by medicine, psychology, social services, schools etc. apparatuses for especially 2000 years. For this reason, sexuality has vital importance in relation to how power is constructed and implemented on modern societies.” (p.61) It can be concluded that for power, sexuality has a critical state so it cannot be left to the hands of the individual. By coming into world in a body, the subject exists by already being in a gender category in social life and s/he is expected to behave accordingly; individual’s sexual actions are affected from his/her gender category. That is to say power has already constructed what kind of sexuality discursively constructed genders should experience. Sexual actions outside of this discourse are regarding as perverse possibly because they are not included in the reproduction. According to Foucault, sexual actions that do
- 286. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 272 not constitute population is not included in power; because, nothing which has not been regulated for reproduction or whose feature is not changed by it has neither place in power nor code or right to speak (2013, p.12). Nevertheless, if we define sexuality only by prohibition modes then we accept that sexual performances transforms into apparatus of sexuality. For Foucault, accepting the assumption that sexuality is repressed means giving consent to the transformation of sexual practice into an apparatus under sexuality umbrella (Zengin, 2012, p.338). For this reason, the concept sexual emancipation is also a construction because if we focus on the essentiality of sexual emancipation then we accept the concept called the apparatus of sexuality. Although modern societies seem like being defined by sexual repression, actually sexuality is constantly constructed and controlled by contemporary discourses and finally a sexual order is constructed in order to guarantee population. In this respect, Foucault’s this question is important in terms of establishing the relationship between sexuality and population in transition from body to social body (2013): “All this garrulous attention which has us in a stew over sexuality, is it not motivated by one basic concern to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form social relations: in short, to constitute a sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative?”(p.33) If we take the explanation above into consideration, Foucault argues that sexuality is not a natural source of desires rather it is a social regulation and cultural construction produced for controlling of sexuality (McNay, 2012, p.321). The question of when the role of the body stops during the sexual action or which bodies performs what kind of sexual action brings the question of the whether the concept of “natural sexuality” exists or not up for discussion. Is there any body and pleasure state that construct sexuality besides power? According to Foucault, pleasure and power are interconnected to each other with complex and phenomenal stimulation and incitement mechanisms (2013, p.42). Hence, searching desire outside of power becomes nonsensical. It also becomes impossible to know the materiality (selfness) of the body outside of cultural interpretation; however, according to Foucault, decipherment of sexuality is not necessarily the exclusion of the body, anatomy, and biologic and functional things (2013, p.108). Sexuality is articulated into bodies, pleasure, physiology and functions. Sexuality is the most speculative, ideal and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations, and pleasures (Foucault, 2013, p.111). 4. Feminist Criticism on Gendered Body It is a commonly acknowledged fact that feminism primarily aims to better the women’s standards of living. Undoubtedly, the criticism of the domination of women body by the patriarchal structure has primary importance in terms of feminism’s approach to body and utilization of sociology of the body. Body politics becomes prominent in feminist discussions in subjects such as commodification of female body, violence against woman and abortion right. Politics that directly encapsulates the body is the most acutely discussed subjects by feminism. The construction of female body is different from the construction of male body because patriarchal system produces power relations that repress and keep women under control. Different from men, women are determined with their bodies and they are regarded as being more sensitive, in need of protection, actually in a more inferior state. Contrary to male body that is seemingly controlled, female body is accepted as a mysterious phenomenon that needs to be supervised.(Berktay, 2009, p.59) This condition limits the discussions with biological essentialism, which ignores the environmental impact on the body, for example, it supports the status quo by positing that male domination depends on male
- 287. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 273 hormones while female compassion and naivety derive from female hormones. In relation to this the idea of evaluating ourselves as a mere body may cause biological essentialism, however, alternatively, considering the human body as being only established by social process entirely destroys the materiality of the body. Defining body only with the biological processes or rejecting materiality and stating that it is only constructed culturally lead us to a vicious circle. At this point, Foucault’s theory of body, which comprehends body as a concrete fact without rounding it off to a fixed biological essence or essence before discursivity (McNay, 2012, p.318), made an important contribution to feminist discourse. For Foucault, body is discursively constructed by power mechanisms (medicine, education, barracks, prison etc.). The discursive construction of body does not mean that it does not exist outside of power (Butler, 2012); “Since power is practiced on a body, body comes before power; since power shapes the body, body is constructed by power to a certain extent or in certain ways.” (p.275) When Butler states that the body comes before power, she does not point out to independent materiality equipped with power relations outside of the body itself (2014, p.54) yet it acquires materiality by being exactly adorned with power relations; that is to say, materiality is the result and measurement of this equipment process (p.54). Although Foucault’s idea of the shaping of the body under the supervision of power mechanisms has made vital contribution to feminism, it is criticized for its inadequacy of presenting precise information about how discipline mechanisms operates differently on female and male bodies. The emphasis that power makes on the body may be inadequate in feminist theory in terms of explaining how female body is historically oppressed. The other criticism is Foucault’s deduction’s reduction of social agents to passive bodies (McNay, 2012, p.315) and its imprisonment of women into silence and to passive status. As a response to this criticism, suggesting that the body is not only a submissive object sheds light at least to the idea that women can be more than a dominated passive sacrifices (McNay, 2012, p.331). According to Butler (2012),” the body is neither substance nor surface, it is not inert or submissive by its nature, it is also not comprised of some internal urges that describes revolt and resistance” (p.275). Butler’s statement that the body may be more than a submissive object is important in terms of the re-evaluation of the women, the experiences and historicity of female body. When the concept of body is analyzed with feminist point of view, the other prominent subjects are the sex and gender debates. As Butler suggested, in the materialization process of the body, the things that regulate the materialization are gendering mechanisms (2007, p.75). 5. Sex and Gender Concepts Sex and gender analysis, connection between sex and sexuality, sexuality’s dependency on power and debates on the constructiveness of gender make us realize the limits of the individual’s body or that it constantly hits to transparent walls while striving to be free. Feminist theorist’s long questioning of how sexual freedom is going to be ensured leads us to the fact that sexes can be questioned. When we begin to transform and/or demolish gender and accordingly biological gender patterns, we will see whether they are going to be independent from the discourses of power or not. Firstly, I want to mention meanings that sex and gender refer to and their evolution in feminist thought in time. For the concepts of sex and gender, while the first one refers to biological existence that most of us are discriminated according to our male and female genital organs, gender refers to, in simple and general term
- 288. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 274 which is culturally constructed and shaped according to sex, being female and male. Later, I will touch upon that dichotomy between man and woman is actually multiplicity, that is to say, gender cannot be limited to a definite number (Butler, 2007, p.71) by giving reference to Butler’s works on this subject. Assumed biological and anatomical differences between male and female body creates a perception that sex should be experienced as a woman and man. For instance, if we dwell on birth of a male child, firstly we categorize it according to its reproductive organ, classify and evaluate it among the male/female and actually we construct it in ‘male’ category. How he is going to behave, what he is going to wear and which role he is going to assume in the society is predetermined. Identically, a female girl has no existence outside of the categories that we established (Savran, 2009, p.273). In this regard, gender exists according to its constructability. In this respect, it can be said that, behind the socially gendered body, it is almost impossible to find an essence independent from its construction .Gender is merely a construction, it is not independent from the discourses that established it and it is constructed by being subject to normalization based on social norms; however, claiming that gender is constructed does not mean that it is imaginary or artificial (Butler, 2012, p.88). On the contrary, by naturalizing itself, it replaces the “truth”. Butler approaches ‘naturalization’ as a process in which genders begin to be seen as natural (Butler, 2001) and every other thing stands outside of these characteristics is regarded as a kind of perversity and abnormality. Butler states that people are afraid of accepting that gender is not limited to two categories and at the same time it has a constantly changing structure (2001): “In the case of gender, I think that people who fear those who are gender dissonant fear something about losing their own sense of normativity, fear knowing that gender is labile, that norms are contingent, that they could, if they wanted to, do their gender differently than how it is being done, fear knowing that gender is a matter of doing and its effects rather than an inherent attribute, an intrinsic feature.” (interview) As it is deduced from Butler’s assertion, all the other sexual identities and gender possibilities outside of the heterosexual gender and accordingly conditioned gender, posits treat for the heterosexuality itself; because gender emerged as a hierarchical order based on social division of labour enabled and shaped by fertility (Savran, 2009, s263). While sexual connections depended on woman and man binary is seen necessary, other sexual actions can be prohibitive. According to Butler, a person’s gender is an index, in which the subject is regulated and reproduced and of prohibited and ordained sexual affairs (2009, p.81). At this point, Butler’s criticism of the salvation of ‘women’, which is the subject of feminism, is important. The subject of the feminist theory is produced by representation politics and it is constructed by the political system that is going to enable its salvation (Butler, 2007, p.78). That is to say, women category is also the result of gendering mechanism and it is produced from the heterosexual power. Butler states that (2012): “Does not establishing women category as a consistent and stable subject mean the reification of gender relations by regulating it even it is made unintentionally? Yet is not this kind of reification totally opposite to the feminist objectives?” (p.49) According to Butler’s assertion we can say radically that there is no womanhood status behind gender and even the illusion considering that there is such kind of “essence” is a result of the discursive construction of the gender by the various points of power (Savran, 2009, p.263). When gender first emerged as a conception, it was in such a structure that was shaped on fixed biological sex and somehow socially articulated to gender duality (Savran, 2009, p.236), today, sex is also opened up for discussion because of its possibility of being a cultural establishment, a construction just like gender ;
- 289. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 275 “Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the service of other political and social interests? If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called “sex” is culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” (Butler, 2012, p.49) Deducing from Butler’s this statement, we can question the assumption which asserts that sex is biological and gender is cultural. Today, genital organs can be reassigned by sex surgeons. Like gender, sex is also not fixed. If the determinants of sex are hormonal, physical, physiological, biological and anatomical differences, how do we classify these differences by making them corresponding to “female” and “male” categories. For Butler, the moment that we cannot interpret a body with our fixed and ordinary cultural perceptions is the moment that we cannot understand whether the body is woman or man/ female or male. Here the staggering moment between the categories constitutes the subject body’s experiment (2012, p.28). In this point of view, the body does not have a sex before it becomes a gendered body. Sex is neither something that somebody merely has nor a fixed definition describing who somebody is (Butler, 2012, p.9). In relation to this, gendered body, in Foucault’s terms, is not independent from power and it is an existence fixed by the repetition of performances determined by power and it gains its permanency through this way. 6. The Concept of Performativity Butler points out that sex is a construct just like gender and also talks about a misconception of evaluating sex as having a fixed and separate existence as a reflection of gendering situation. Sex, seemed in an ascribed and fixed category, is considered as an extension of biological aspect of the body. Butler, by opposing this idea, dwells on sex categories by subversively interpreting them and attempts to explain how cultural mechanisms, which constructed the body, established sex and gender. She states that (2012): “Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality.” (p.224) What Butler states here is that behind performative enactments there is no sex identity belonging to sex and gender. In Nietzsche’s terms, she states that there is no doer behind the deed. The condition of “being” is constituted by the repetition of “doing” action. Butler defines performativity as not being a singular act but as a ritual showing its effect by naturalization itself in the context of a body and as a culturally sustained temporal duration (2012, p.20). Correspondingly, the concepts of social gender, sex and body should be examined critically in their historicity. According to Butler (2012),”there is no gender identity behind the gender expressions; that identity is constructed performatively by “manifestations” “expressions” that are said to be the results of it” (p..77). She also states that at this point an identity of gender, not totally rejecting it but, is neither a reason for existence nor an objective to be achieved as a result of politicization (2001): “The deconstruction of gender and sexuality does not mean that identity categories are no longer available. One can still organize as a lesbian, but one has to be open to the notion that we don’t yet know who else will ally with that sign, or when that sign will have to be relinquished in order to promote another political goal...
- 290. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 276 Identity marks something about my position in my travels, but it is not my ground, my epistemology, or indeed my final stand.” (interview) Butler states that a person can organize for an identity category; however, this identity will not be a ground for the person but it indicates the person’s present situation and it shows that identities can be changed as a result of discourses, gender can be turned upside down and sex is not a fixed category. The thing that we assume as an “internal” feature and identities that we build upon it is the hallucinatory effect of naturalized gestures (Butler, 2012, p.29). When it is realized that gender has also a gender identity and produced by repetitive performances, we can open up to a world in which it is possible to form new social modes by eluding from the current social bodies. 7. Conclusion We have seen that the body, which is one of the most important elements of the social interaction, is not independent from relationality, discourses, culture, history and power. By giving reference to Michel Foucault’s and Judith Butler’s works, I have tried to express that the body is not an ascribed entity; on the contrary, it is a historical reality that can be interpreted through culture. The body, which is a product of social practices, political and cultural discourses, cannot be found outside of the system that formed through language because language constructs the body discursively. According Foucauldian point of view, we can say that since power is described as constructive and reproductive, the body is also in a perpetually constructible dynamic process. Power produces knowledge and knowledge produces desire, and desire establishes an authoritarian power over the body in order to control it. Creation of gendered body causes the concept of “natural sex” to enter into the lives of the individuals; therefore, the construction of sexuality, which is easy to control and discipline. What Foucault named as modern power reproduces power over the control and surveillance of the body and the most obvious internalization form of the norms depend on the bodily repetitions. This is what Butler refers to as performativity; that is to say, body becomes gendered by meeting various cultural norms and wearing them. In this respect, it can be deduced that there are no fixed, ascribed and inborn social gender and sex. Since from the very beginning, Butler has always said that sex is also a gender. Accordingly, gaining a critical point of view over the relationship between sex, sexuality, gender, sexual orientation and desires is very important in terms of eluding from the fixed categories that power imposed upon us. References Berktay, F. (2009, Bahar). Feminist teorinin önemli bir alanı: cinsellik. Cogito, 2887, 58. Butler, J. (2001). There is a person here. (Breen, M.S, Interviewer) [web site]. retrieved from http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/articles/there-is-a-person-here-an-interview-with-judith-butler/ Butler, J. (2007). Toplumsal cinsiyet ve bedenin maddeleşmesi. Cinsiyetli olmak (ss.75). İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları Butler, J. (2009, Bahar). Toplumsal Cinsiyet Düzenlemeleri. Cogito, 2887, 58. Butler, J. (2012). Cinsiyet Belası. (Ertür. B, Trans.). İstanbul: Metis.
- 291. Ebru Eren /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 277 Butler, J. (2012, Yaz). Bedenler ve iktidar. Cogito, 3652, 70-71. Butler, J. (2014). Bela bedenler. (Çakırlar. C ve Talay. Z, Trans.) İstanbul: Pinhan. Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power: society, the person and sexual politics. Oxford: Blackwell. Foucault, M. (2013). Cinselliğin tarihi.(Tanrıöver. H, Trans.). İstanbul: Ayrıntı. Foucault, M. (2014). Özne ve iktidar. (Ergüden. I ve Akınhay. O, Trans.). İstanbul: Ayrıntı. McNay, L. (2012, Yaz). Foucautcu beden ve deneyimin dışlanması. Cogito, 3652, 70-71. Savran, G. (2009). Beden emek tarih. İstanbul: Kanat Kitap. Turner, S. B. (2008). Body& society: explorations in social theory. Featherstone. M. (ed.). Nottingham Trent University: Sage. Zengin, A.N. (2012, Yaz). Foucault’ya bir bakış: öznenin cinselliğinden kendiliğin haz ahlakına. Cogito, 3652, 70-71.
- 292. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 278 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Gendered Fields in Women's Leisure Time Experiences: A Study on the "Gün" Meetings in Ankara Ebru Karayiğit* Middle East Technical University, Department of Sociology, Turkey Abstract Gün is a particular form of female association which is mainly practiced by urban middle-class women in Turkey as a form of leisure time activity where women groups periodically meet with each other. It is also a form of "social field" where women are positioned through their gendered existences. This study attempts to analyze the gendered fields in women's leisure time experiences based on an ethnographic study of two gün meetings in Ankara, namely Karadenizliler and Komşular meetings. My research questions are the following: Do güns reproduce traditional gender roles and gendered division of labor? Do "güns with savings" contribute to women's independence? In light of gender studies and sociology of leisure, it is argued that gün meetings create gendered fields where social control over women leads them to adopt normative feminine leisure-time activities. The methodological approach of this study is based on a synthesis of Feminist point of view with a Bourdieusian approach. The attempt to synthesize these two approaches in terms of leisure studies can be considered as an alternative way of dealing with women’s internalization of traditional gender roles in gendered fields. The dynamics in the gün meetings together with the participants' everyday life experiences reveal how gün gatherings are thoroughly gendered and how these meetings reproduce patriarchal norms despite some positive outcomes experienced by the participants. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Women’s studies; leisure; everyday life; gendered field; gün meeting. * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90-312-566-16-03. E-mail address: karayigitebru@gmail.com
- 293. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 279 1. Introduction The interest in the issue of women's everyday life experiences which provide essential clues about their subordination in a patriarchal structure is increasing day by day. These 'minor' components of social life not only concerns researchers with a feminist stance, but also the social scientists who are interested in various subfields of sociology. One of these branches of sociology is leisure time studies. Leisure time, which has an important place in our daily lives and which is seen as the anti-thesis of work time, is a relatively recent concept which has been used since industrialization. Except a few early studies on the topic like Veblen's pioneering analysis of leisure class (1899), and the prominent studies of Malinowski (1931) and Huizinga (1938), the issue of leisure has become a major area of interest in the West since the 1960s. Although the studies on leisure time have diversified over time, feminist leisure theorists developed a different approach to leisure which explicitly criticizes previous androcentric analyses for neglecting women's distinctive leisure activities and the patriarchal nature of such activities. In Turkey, the patriarchal structure of women's leisure practices are also enhanced through unique cultural control mechanisms over women based on two separate worlds of leisure of women and men. An analysis of the culturally specific and distinctive leisure experiences of Turkish women which are different from their Western counterparts provides a ground to make a modest contribution to the literature on feminism. Reception day (kabul günü), which was a type of formal meeting among women, was an essential path for women to move into public life "in the first few decades of the Republican era" in Turkey; and it was an important form of social gathering among women where they could socialize and reproduce traditional gender roles and femininity by learning "manners, fashion, child-rearing practices and relations among spouses" (Özbay, 1999, p. 561). After the 1980s, women’s meetings have changed their form; women begun to rotate money, gold or silver coins, or other valuable materials in their meetings on a regular basis in more steady groups. According to Wolbert, in Turkey, together with the changes in political and economic structure, "the importance of money for social mobility" increased in the eighties (1996, p. 188). The gün meeting which is a special form of women's association in Turkey is specific to urban middle- class women. Gün is a form of Turkish leisure time activity where women spend their free time with their friends, neighbors or relatives usually in their houses on a reciprocal basis. Nowadays many women prefer to meet in restaurants or at coffee shops which is an emergent trend in gün meetings. Although there are limited numbers of studies about gün meetings, the arguments about gün vary depending on the disciplines dealing with these meeting. Some ethnographic and sociological studies about gün aimed only to understand the specific features of these gatherings (Benedict, 1974; Sönmez et.al., 2010; Büyükokutan, 2012; Sağır, 2013). Others focused on the relationship between gender and gün meetings, which is a same-sex leisure time activity mostly held in private spheres (Lloyd and Fallers, 1976; Özbay, 1995 and 1999; Bellér-Hann, 1996; Wolbert, 1996). Yet others analyzed these meetings with reference to other factors like conjugal family values (Ekal, 2006) or to the role of mouth communication in consumers' decision-making processes (Alemdar and Köseoğlu, 2013). Gün meetings also have an economic dimension where women give and take money or other valuable materials like gold coins on a reciprocal basis. The authors studying gün use different names to define these meetings such as money day, gold day, silver day or currency day (e.g. Dollar, Mark or Euro days) referring to the material which is being rotated by the members of a group. Monetary rotation among women can be accepted as a strategy against relative deprivation of the groups who are economically marginal like a group of women who are excluded from paid work. In Turkey, gün meetings take place mainly among housewives. However, working women as well as men such as participants' sons or husbands can attend these meetings in absentia although not on a regular basis. In recent
- 294. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 280 years, working women and men have started forming their own gün groups with their workmates where they only rotate money. The aim of this study is to explore the functions of gün meetings as a gendered field which is a specific leisure time practice of Turkish women. My research questions are the following: Do güns reproduce traditional gender roles and gendered division of labor? Do "güns with savings" contribute to women's independence as a specific form of leisure activity among women? Older reception days were the fields of women where they could gain a certain sense of "recognition" within their group. Today, along with the "güns with savings", women’s freedom to use money is added to the function of recognition. The information used in this study is based on an ethnographic study of two gün groups in Ankara: Karadenizliler (from the Black Sea) and Komşular (Neighbors), respectively. 2. Conceptual Terrain The concept of gender needs constant reworking and redefinition based on new empirical evidence since gender relations undergo continuous flux and reinvention. In this sense, gün meeting is a fruitful area for further research where different characteristics of gender such as difference, inequality and oppression are experienced by women. Since mixed-sex socializing is incompatible with the norms of patriarchal control such as gender segregation, gün meetings become an acceptable or appropriate way of socializing for women. In this context, I define gün as a gendered leisure time activity of Turkish women. As argued by Skeggs, we become gendered through being lived, just as we become classed, raced and sexed (1997, p 9). Women and men become gendered through the social processes that produce gender. Beginning from earlier ages, individuals take on gendered qualities and characteristics through learning masculinity or femininity (Wharton, 2005, p. 31). I will analyze the gendered relations in gün meetings using the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu who studied social processes through the concepts of habitus, field, and forms of capital when formulating his general theory of practice. In Bourdieu's theory of practice, everyday life is the area where power relations both arise and are continuously reproduced in different fields. He analyzes the processes in which actors consciously or unconsciously internalize power relations with his concepts like habitus, field and symbolic violence. Although Bourdieu has not much emphasis on gender, there are parallels between Bourdieu's theory and Feminism since both of them stresses the experiences of actors and the role of power relations in social life. For this reason, the methodological approach of this study is based on a synthesis of feminist point of view with a Bourdieusian approach. Bourdieu's methodology shares the same principle with Feminism which attributes a vital role to subjective experiences in knowledge production although it does not fundamentally specify women's experiences. 2.1. The Concept of "Gendered Field" I conceptualize my research topic, namely women’s gün meetings, as ‘gendered fields’. Hence I attend to expand my research on gün meetings by drawing on Bourdieu's conceptual framework to understand gendered relations better. Bourdieu's approach is one of the important attempts to build a link between subjective and objective relations in social science. As Ritzer claims, this is the distinguishable characteristics of Bourdieu's theory where he offered "a distinctive theory of the relationship between agency and structure" (2011, p. 536). Bourdieu's famous concept habitus refers to "the mental structures through which they [actors] apprehend the social world ... the product of the internalization of the structures of that world" (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 18). Relationality is the critical aspect of Bourdieu's theory. As concepts,
- 295. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 281 social reality becomes meaningful only within a "system of relations" (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 96). In a parallel vein, Bourdieu defines the concept of field as "a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions" (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, pp. 97, 101). Habitus and the specific dispositions that it constitutes are "only formed, only function and are only valid in a field, in the relationship with a field" (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 94). Although habitus exists in the minds of actors, fields appear outside their minds (Ritzer, 2011, p. 530). Thus, the concept of gendered field not only refers to the gendered relations devaluing women's position in macro structure of society, but also engages with the lived experiences of women in the field of leisure experiences in terms of micro analysis. Fields are gendered through several ways. First of all, they reflect the general gendered social structure by the internalization and reproduction of gender division, inequality and oppression. Some Feminist Bourdieusian scholars and Bourdieu himself emphasize on that symbolic violence is incorporated as a part of agent's habitus; and masculine domination is a consequence of symbolic violence in which "the traditional relationship between the sexes is structured by a habitus which makes male power appear legitimate" (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 1; Krais, 1993, p. 169; Moi, 1991, p. 1030). If gender has a habitus, there must also be a field where a related habitus can arise. Field is conceptualized here as a "network of social relations that follows rules and regularities that are not directly explicit" (Huppatz, 2009, pp. 49-50). In this sense, Moi argues that gender, like class, is a part of a general social field rather than any specific field of gender (1991, p.1034). In this context, McLeod offers two ways of understanding the relationship between gender and field in terms of feminist engagements with Bourdieu (2005, p. 19). Firstly, social fields are understood as differentiated by gender (like class or race); and secondly, subjective dispositions can be gendered because gender is an inherited and embodied entity that is shaped in interaction with social fields (McLeod, 2005, p. 19). I argue that gender relations are also sustained by components (subfields) of social, cultural and economic fields in a relational way. In this sense, my own research topic -gün can be considered as one of those subfields which has “its own logic, rules and regularities" (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 104). In more detail, all social fields have some characteristics which are determined by gender relations as a consequence of gender difference, gender inequality, gender oppression or structural oppression caused by the patriarchal and capitalist systems. Therefore, although I do not present gün or other subfields as a field of gender particularly, I claim that the whole compositions of these fields are totally gendered, so they constitute the gendered fields. This is because I agree with McLeod's statement that "structurally differentiated social fields ... offer potentially stronger ways of conceptualizing gender" (2005, p. 21). My opinion is that women's gün meetings are one of those gendered fields where women embody gendered structures in their daily practices. At the same time, they normalize such structures through the mental and cognitive patterns in their gendered habituses and reproduce gendered fields outside their minds. 3. The Study of Two Gün Meetings in Ankara My study is based on the study of the two gün meetings in Ankara, namely Karadenizliler (Black Sea coasters) and Komşular (Neighbors), which are the names of the groups as used by the participants. There were a total of twenty-two members in both groups, and eleven in each. The interviews were carried out in Batıkent which is a middle class suburban area in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. The majority of the participants had an immigration history. Although some were born in Ankara, their parents were rural origin migrants. All of the women in two gün groups and their families were from different segments of the middle class. The ethnographic study of these two gün groups was very significant for my work. I have participated in many meetings of each group for about six months between November 2013 and May 2014. My
- 296. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 282 participation in these gün meetings gave me the chance to conduct participant observation not only about the structure of the meetings, but also about the functions of gün in the lives of the housewives. It was also able observe their behaviors, interactions and attitudes as members of gün groups which provided me with a rich and unique insight into their actions and ideas. Although for an outsider these meetings appear to be very ordinary, they are very functional and have a very complex structure. Questions about the specific gün experiences of the participants, as well as their experiences related to gender both in the gün meeting and in a wider social context, were asked in interviews in order to shed light on the meetings and the gendered relationships of the participants in everyday life. This study will also make an analysis of the different dimensions of gender relationships based on the perceptions of the women related to their leisure time and everyday life. There were two basic differences between the members of the two groups. The first of these was the motive behind the composition of the groups, in that the Karadenizliler group membership was made up of women from Black Sea coastal cities while the women in the Komşular group had no common place of origin, with their only connection being that they were all residents of the same apartment building in Batıkent. The second difference was in the places where the women met every month. While the participants of the Karadenizliler group met in their own houses and offered home-made refreshments, the Komşular group preferred to gather in different restaurants or cafes. The women attending both groups are predominantly urban middle class, although what differentiates the Karadenizliler group from the Komşular group is that most of the members transitioned from the traditional rural to urban middle class through migration. In two gün meetings, there were a total of four participants, who attended the group only indirectly. It should be noted that indirect participation is a means of being included only in monetary exchange, and so it would seem that the sole motivation of the indirect participants is economic. Indirect participants can be separated into two groups: (i) those who may not attend directly due to such obstacles as work and childcare, and (ii) those that cannot identify themselves with the gün groups. It is found that aside from one young participant, the indirect participants tended not to want to appear like they attached excessive importance to money, although this was not the case only for the indirect participants, as many of the direct participants also did not want to appear to be money-oriented. That said, it could be understood that the economic aspect did not always matter as far as the forms of participation are concerned. 4. Discussion and Conclusion In both gün groups, the participants tended to state their positive feelings about the meetings. To "socialize", "learn something new", "see friends" and "fulfil their longings" were the reasons given for attending, and since the participants' leisure-time is limited, they asserted that they looked forward to gün meetings with excitement. Most of the participants stated that they felt psychologically "relaxed" at being able to let off steam with their friends, and "happiness" at meeting their friends. Despite its positive outcomes like socialization and relaxation, gün meetings are fields of subordination for women. The most noticeable gendered characteristic of the gün meetings was gender segregation. As argued by Wolbert, "the border between the female and male world" is accepted by attending the gün (1996, p. 203). The gün reproduces gender segregation both spatially and socially. The choice of venue for gün is an important issue that bears a kind of gender dimension. In Feminist literature, the inside/outside division is one of the categories of gender segregation that legitimizes the traditional attributions to gender. Women are always confined, like private figures, in contrast to the freedom of movement enjoyed by men in various public spaces. For this reason, the habit of arranging a
- 297. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 283 gün meeting inside home can be understood, as it reproduces the traditional perception of gender division and inequality. In a traditional understanding, femininity is socially controlled through 'respectable' forms of female leisure time activities. In feminist leisure literature, it is argued that male control over public spaces directs women towards more secure leisure activities in private spaces; so the home is the basic terrain where women can both socialize with those of the same sex while reproducing their domestic roles and responsibilities. In this context, Karadenizliler gün meeting is one of those secure and respectable leisure practices engaged in by women that are mostly held in the private realm. In the Karadenizliler gün group, the members who were fervent opponents to arranging meetings outside, generally spoke about the discomfort and formality of hosting meetings outside. Home was defined as a "warmer place" than a restaurant, although there was a certain paradox in defending the home as a meeting place, in that they claimed that they felt restricted outside the home, although in theory, the outside provides for greater freedom of movement. This restriction can be attributed to the internalization of gender roles and social control which entails rules of behaviour that should be followed in public places, in that the women feel like they cannot move, speak, laugh or entertain freely in a place that is occupied by men or strangers. Arranging gün meetings outside home was a distinctive characteristic of the Komşular group, and is also an increasing trend among women from the urban middle-class. This sort of meeting is important, since it deconstructs the distinction between the inner and outer domains that is based on sex segregation. According to this scheme of inner/outer distinction, as the basis of female/male segregation, women joining the Komşular group represent a new world of women's gatherings, extending their scope into the world of the outer domain that is accepted traditionally to be a male sphere. However, despite the potential for the emancipation of women from the privacy of the home, women are unable to experience real freedom through such leisure time activities as gün meetings. This is based primarily on the fact that middle-aged women groups still prefer to socialize with the same sex in terms of leisure, and the participation of men in a gün group is restricted to their inclusion in monetary rotation. As argued by some of the participants of Karadenizliler and Komşular gün groups, they still experience social restrictions outside that prevent them from behaving as comfortably in restaurants as they can in the home. They are concerned that they may be seen as engaging in such socially unacceptable behaviours as laughing or speaking loudly. This is clear evidence that women internalize significantly normative feminine behaviour through their gendered habituses, which may unconsciously motivate them to avoid socially undesirable behaviour. Gender relations were not only mirrored in the spatial relations of the gün meetings, but the reproduction of traditional female roles was also apparent in most of the activities carried out by the group members. As observed during the field research, women's "responsibilities" of housewifery and caregiving of children or grandchildren continued to exist even during the gün meetings. Especially in the gün meetings held in the home, they involve many activities for the hostess before and during the meetings that are extensions of such household tasks. They generally bring children or grandchildren to meetings. This responsibility of caregiving is what restrains women inside the home and prevents them from going outside. Gün, in this sense, cannot be defined as a qualified and pure leisure time activity. Moreover, in the gün meetings, women usually discussed personal and familial topics preventing them from developing certain political views or political consciousness. Most of the participants believed that politics is irrelevant to their lives and that it can also create conflict among the members of the group, which they wanted to avoid completely. Economic relationship of the gün meetings were also analyzed as gendered fields. For women making some savings is a way of coping with their "relative deprivation". Most of the participants who were married housewives were financially dependent on their husbands; thus, they had to take the 'gün money' was from their husbands. In some cases gün money was repaid to their husbands. Money gives housewives a sense
- 298. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 284 of freedom when it goes to zula (secret store of money. However, most of the participants stated that they either spend the gün money on household expenses or their husbands directly take it. Most participants cannot treat the money as their own, even if their husbands do not interfere with its usage. They feel some sort of responsibility towards their family which prevents them to save and spend money for their own sake. What makes the economy of the gün a gendered field was this "gendered use of money" where women cannot make personal decisions about money either intentionally or unintentionally. In the Bourdieusian conceptual sphere, it can also be argued that the gendered use of money is also a form of symbolic violence which is an invisible form of domination practiced upon the participants of the gün groups with their complicity (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 167). The findings of this study also provide important clues about gendered relations in women's everyday life experiences. These relations were analyzed to discuss how patriarchal control in women's daily life reflects on to their leisure time activities. Family is the basic institution also constituting a gendered field which sheds light on the internalized patriarchal control mechanisms in gendered habitus. Some participants said that they experienced the first form of patriarchal control in their lives through their traditional natal families which was symbolized by an authoritarian male figure like a father or grandfather. The most common experience of patriarchal control over the participants of the gün meetings in their childhood was their fathers' reluctance to send them to school. This deprivation made women feel sensitive about their daughters' education. In other words, there was a difference between them and their parents' attitudes towards girls. On the other hand, although the later generations who moved away from the traditional values dominant in rural regions were more conscious about their daughters' education, they still try to impose their own choices about fields of training which they consider as acceptable for girls. This study also sheds light on participants' experiences of marriage. For most of the participants, marriage had a vital role through which they could drift apart from their natal family. Nevertheless, patriarchal control takes a different form in marriage relationship where fathers' roles in natal family are transferred to husbands. Most of the participants in this research stated that marriage was the only way to disengage from their village and from pressure. Only a few of the participants of the gün meetings claimed that they were free to select their own husbands, in that the groom would rather be suggested or insisted upon by the natal family. Arranged marriages are widespread among the members of the two gün groups who specifically have migration background. When women marry with a "good" husband, they gain a sense of autonomy; when they marry with a "bad" one, they are again controlled, so chance is an important factor in these women's lives. Patriarchal control also reflects itself in women's unending responsibilities of motherhood and wifehood. As indicated by some of the participants, motherhood was explicitly understood as a "sacred" duty and a vital priority; they identified themselves firstly as mothers which has the potential for symbolic violence. Among the members of the two gün meetings, it was seen that decisions were taken either by the husbands or jointly although the economically independent participants, who were marginal, stated that they were the primary decision-makers at home. In general, men were the primary decision-makers over finance, while women were over the home and children. In the context of Feminist consciousness, although all of the participants claimed that there should be gender equality by criticizing the existing inequality in Turkey, they also accepted gender difference either by attributing positive characteristics to femininity or stressing male power with regard to the biological characteristics of women and men. In both cases, accepting gender difference appeared as a way to legitimize the existing power relations in the society; gender differences were internalized as natural and given, which is incompatible with the feminist goals of emancipation and freedom of women.
- 299. Ebru Karayiğit /METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 285 According to Kandiyoti, women's everyday life practices in Turkey are directly affected by gender- specific cultural experiences (1987, pp. 334-335). In this sense, Turkish women's leisure time activities have the potential to create a peculiar form of women's culture unlike those of Western women. In Western literature, leisure is analyzed usually as a personal matter, while feminist analyses remind us of its broader meanings in terms of gender. There is a 'gender gap' both in the quality and quantity of women's leisure time. Most women's lack of time and money is a factor to increase their financial dependence on their male partners. This creates a kind of time pressure on women which leads them to adopt forms of leisure acceptable by the patriarchal system. Sexual division of labor also forces women to be 'good' wives and 'good' mothers who are explicitly responsible for the house and family. Hence, women's leisure is open to be fragmented and contaminated by the traditional responsibilities of housekeeping and motherhood. Although Turkish women face all these handicaps in their leisure practices, they also experience a kind of patriarchal control which distinctively segregates women's leisure from men's. Turkish women are viewed as domestic figures more than their Western counterparts. For this reason, their leisure time activities are mostly held in bordered physical spaces like home where they also reproduce their domestic roles of housewifery and motherhood. Even in situations when they can go out into (urban) public spaces, they need to restrict and control their movements in order to meet the expectations of the patriarchal society as the study of two gün meetings shows. Hence, women-only groups, in which women can move freely, become vitally important in Turkish women's leisure time practices. However, solidarity among women inside these female networks does not solve their problem of gender segregation, inequality or oppression, instead these gender-segregated networks include some components deepening women's passivity. As these networks isolate women from wider spheres of socialization, women cannot develop political consciousness and relate their personal experiences to political outcomes. Further studies about gün meetings can be carried out in different regions taking into consideration various other leisure activities among women with different life styles. Moreover, holding gün meetings outside the home setting appears to be an increasing trend which is a new form of "leisure industry" and which can be studied thoroughly in future studies. The reproduction of femininity, which was a featured characteristic of former Reception days, can also be studied further in the context of today's "güns with savings".
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- 302. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 288 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Gendering the Innovator: The Case of R&D in Turkey Ece Öztana , Setenay Nil Doğanb* a Yıldız Technical University, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Turkey b Yıldız Technical University, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,Turkey Abstract R&D is considered to be one of the fields in which the gender gap is wide. The reflections of the analogy of leaky pipeline, a term used for vertical differentiation in academy can also be observed in those scientific activities related with the private sector. In the private sector in Turkey, the gender gap becomes wider: the percentage of female researchers in the universities (41%) decreases to 24% in the private sector (Meulders & O’Dorchai, 2013: 31- 33). Though half of the undergraduates and gradutes are female in Turkey (ÖSYM İstatistikleri), a widening gender gap is observed in terms of employment in R&D (Meulders & O’Dorchai, 2013: 44). Given this background, this paper will focus on gendered perceptions of technology and innovation through the interviews conducted with employees working in a university technopark and some of the large R&D centers in Turkey working in several sectors such as electronics, automotive etc. It aims to explore how R&D employees perceive the relationships between technology, innovation and gender. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keywords: Gender; technology; innovation; R&D; Turkey * Corresponding Author. E-mail address: setenaynildogan@gmail.com
- 303. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 289 1. Introduction Research and development (R&D) involves innovative studies conducted systematically to increase knowledge and practices (Keleş, 2007: 45). While Turkey’s R&D intensity score is below the European average, it has increased continuously since the 2000s. Meanwhile, development of human capital in R&D has become one of the aims of Turkey’s National Strategy of Science, Technology and Innovation. As the literature underlines the underrepresentation of women in technology fields with reference to several factors such as stereotyping, discrimination, ability differences, socialisation techniques, child- rearing career interruptions and choice (Adams & Weiss, 2011), research and development (R&D) is considered to be one of the fields in which the gender gap is wide. The reflections of the analogy of leaky pipeline, a term used for the vertical differentiation in academy can also be observed in those scientific activities related with the private sector. In the private sector, the gender gap becomes wider: the percentage of female researchers in the universities (41%) decreases to 24% in the private sector (Meulders & O’Dorchai, 2013: 31-33). Though half of the undergraduates and gradutes are female in Turkey, a widening gender gap is observed in terms of employment in R&D (Meulders & O’Dorchai, 2013: 44; Öztan & Doğan, 2015.) Given this background, this paper will focus on gendered perceptions of technology and innovation through the interviews conducted with employees working in a university technopark and some of the large R&D centers in Turkey working in several sectors such as electronics, automotive etc. It aims to explore how R&D employees perceive the relationships between technology, innovation and gender. 2. Gender and Innovation A group of studies in the literature claims that the emergence of the knowledge society in general eradicates patriarchalism (Castells, 1997) since it opens up new opportunities for women in the emerging technology transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship fields that avoid some of the negative consequences of academic science (Etzkowitz, et. al, 2010.) However, another group of studies points out that the very definition of the knowledge society is gendered (Walby, 2011), as it often revolves around technology that traditionally has been dominated by men and discourses of masculinity (Cockburn, 1985; Wajcman, 1991). R&D is considered to have a wide gender gap. Various studies have focused on both empirical and theoretical aspects of gender in innovation, research and development in Western Europe and North America (Keller, 1992; Kirkup and Keller, 1992; Wynarczyk and Marlow, 2010; Wynarczyk, 2010). These studies show that the number of women in this field is small, and that female survivors in the field have either similar or higher performance levels than their male counterparts (Whittington & Smith-Doerr, 2005; 366). They underline the need to explore the structural and institutional dynamics of the filtering processes in the field of innovation. The role of women in society and certain cultural issues, such as early marriage, the gender employment gap and violence against women, and several indicators of the general economic, social and family environment affecting women all significantly reduce women’s involvement in innovative activity (Carrasco, 2014). Furthermore, literature underlines the existence of a gender gap in patenting that signals a disadvantage for women, especially for mothers (Whittington, 2011). Women researchers tend to have less knowledge about inventing than their male counterparts (Murray & Graham, 2007). Studies of gender and innovation have highlighted that the dominating image of innovation and innovators builds on stereotypical notions of gender, promoting men and certain masculinities as the norm and concluded that
- 304. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 290 Innovation policies and programmes have not mainstreamed gender in all areas of activity, nor in all stages of decision-making processes, despite regulations. Innovation policies and innovation networks primarily prioritise men, male-dominated networks and male-dominated sectors of the economy. Innovations and innovation networks are usually described with reference to mechanical machines and technical products, which can be interpreted as masculine traits, rather than human relationships and services (Petersson and Lindberg, 2013). 3. Research This study is based on interviews conducted for a research project, “Career Paths and Gender in R&D and Innovation”1 that employs both qualitative and quantitative methods. The project aimed to explore gender differences in the career experiences in R&D and innovation, with a focus on entrance to the innovation sector, career ladders, career interruptions and strategies, mobility, participation in projects, patent applications and acquisitions, and home-work balance. One university technopark (officially known as a Technology Development Region2 ) and three of Turkey’s largest private R&D centers were chosen as the field of our research. In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 female and 25 male R&D employees working in the R&D centers and technopark firms. In addition to the interviews, we conducted an online survey with the employees of the R&D centers and firms. This study explores the notion of innovation in the technical/SET fields. The service sector as a female- intensive sector also employs the notion of innovation. Yet R&D and innovation are often associated with more commercial and male-dominated fields of SET. As such an association is a gendered one that has also been criticized in the literature (Berglund and Granat Thorslund, 2012), this study focuses on the technical fields in order to analyze those gendered constructions of R&D and innovation. 4. Natural Born Innovators A major gender difference that our research underlined regards the occupational decisions of our interviewees. Male researchers commonly emphasized their very early interest and enthusiasm in technological fields starting from a very early age, whereas only one female interviewee, Demet, mentioned an early interest in natural sciences and technical fields. In her case, positive role models and their encouragement became critical. While women develop an affinity for these fields through various teachers, relatives and family members during their educational years, male researchers underline their early curiosity for science, research and technology in their narratives on natural sciences and technical fields. This emphasis on curiosity without any reference to role models, as being “self-evident,” “automatic,” or a “childhood passion”, quite like a calling is a gendered narrative. Innovation appears to be a male childhood dream as far as the narratives in our research showed: 1 This paper is based on a project funded by TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). 2 Several Technology Development Regions have been established since 2001 under the guidance of Development Plans (Technology Development Regions Law, No. 4691, 26,6.2001).
- 305. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 291 “…When I was a child, I was known as the inventor. I had activities in very different fields, such as models, aero planes, machines, chemistry. ...Therefore, everybody was already expecting me to be an engineer.” (Cem, male, aged 43, structural design engineer, durable manufactures R&D) “If you ask me where it comes from, I know it since I was a child because I used to make psychopathic things. I used to take the front wheel of the car and I used to plug it in. I used to transform my toys into totally different things. I used to be interested in nature, I used to make small spider toys. It was something that comes from myself. If you asked me about my preference for medicine or mechanical engineering, my choice was always medicine. But mechanical engineering was something in which I was already dealing with.” (Gökhan, male, aged 29, mechanical engineer, electronics R&D) “…When I was a child, there was a TV series called “The Wheels.” In the program, they were designing automobiles. There were some scenes that displayed the works of those designers in the field of aerodynamics. I liked it very much; I liked the construction of a machine. The machines with the greatest amount of spirit, I believe, are cars. I believe I have a special competence and talent for machines and design. After my circumcision, people gave me some car toys. I used to open their covers and examine them; I used to try to make other cars similar to them. I was fond of mechanics.” (Demir, male, aged 45, mechanical engineer, automotive R&D) Demir’s association of his profession, his pleasure for technology and a very particular moment of his life, his circumcision which is considered to be one of the basic rites of passage to the masculine world in Turkey is far from being coincidental. “The pleasure in technology” and a shared pride in technology and in technical competence is highlighted as a strong motivator, a significant reward and a central element in the individual identities and shared culture of male engineers (Faulkner, 2010). “I used to be extremely interested in cars since childhood. I used to look through the car windows in order to see its speed. I used to drive before the legal age. ...My choice for automobile was always so self- evident. When I was an undergraduate student, I enrolled to the courses on automobiles. This love of course led me to this firm finally.” (Demir, male, aged 45, mechanical engineer, automotive R&D) Fascination with machines, especially autombiles was a very common theme among the male intervieewees. As both modern technology and hegemonic masculinity are historically associated with industrial capitalism, they are linked culturally by the themes of achieving control, domination and "mastery of nature" (Faulkner, 2010.) Fascination with machines which the male R&D employees in our research often underlined stands as one of the basic themes of "masculine culture" (Wajcman, 1991) of technology and innovation which associates machines with masculinity: “I grew up in a small town but I was always fond of new things. It was not the simple toys but mechanisms with movement. It was an attempt to understand what you see in nature, to understand how they operate…” (Tolga, male, aged 35, technical teacher, technician, durable manufactures R&D) Some male R&D employees narrated about their adventure of innovation as a lonely road: they were all alone in their quest for the pleasure and power of technology. The male innovator was self-made: “I was 7 or 8 when I first got on a plane. That was my first time on a plane. Now I vaguely remember that for me it was what they called “fascinating” in English. Then my interest for the airplanes increased slowly. I started by collecting the photographs of airplanes in the magazines, enclopedias etc., reading whatever I could finf about the airplanes. Actually when I was in high school, I was informed enough to know how airplanes operate. With my knowledge on physics in high school I at least learn how planes can move. This is how it happened. There was not a role model, a pilot brother or a professor working with airplanes for me.” (İlker, male, aged 50, aircraft engineer, R&D manager, electronic R&D)
- 306. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 292 Female R&D employees referred to role models, such as relatives, teachers etc. in their childhood. In cases with no role models, women’s narratives on engineering are often explained strategically, such as by “the choice of the successful student” or “choosing the university with the highest score.” Among the engineer, technician and expert women, we did not encounter any narratives about being inclined towards science starting from a very early age. As women discursively underline the importance of role models, in practice SET fields are “masculine” and male dominated fields that require additional encouragement from role models as far as women are concerned. 5. Technical / Social Dualism Another major dynamic that contributes to the gendering of the innovator in the field of R&D regards the conventional gendering of the technical/social dualism (Gansmo et al 2003) which has been problematized by the feminist technology studies. In a culture where sociality is presumed to be a key ingredient of being a woman, and where women and men are presumed to be different, this makes the woman techie something of an oxymoron (Faulkner, 2010). Women are expected and even manipulated to be social as opposed to the technical, asocial ‘nerds’ of engineering: “Well, it is more like: “You are strong in communication skills, you can do it much better.” I don’t know whether or not I should consider this sex discrimination. It can also be a prejudice. But I should also add that noone said “You are a woman, you cannot do it. So leave it.” After they really got to know me, it was more like “Demet, you are good at these tasks, it is hard to find a software developer good at these tasks. Software developers are good at writing and developing codes. But you can fulfill also this task. Can we take you here? They were manipulations after they got to know me.” (Demet, female, aged 31, electrical engineer, team leader, technopark ICT firm) Yet, Demet also underlined the existence of another masculinist practice of R&D in Turkey. Women who “did not prove themselves in the technical fields when they were being hired” were assumed to have a lack of interest in the technical tasks and assigned to “the social” tasks: “If you did not prove yourself in the technical fields when you were being hired, then there emerges a tendency to transfer them to project management, analysis etc. since they assume that women are not very interested in writing codes.” (Demet, female, aged 31, electrical engineer, technopark ICT firm) Such an exclusion from “the technical” may work as a vicious cycle for women who are educated in SET fields and yet continously relegated to particular tasks. Yet, some studies argue that the stereotype that women are better at working with people may be working in their favour in preparing them for advancement as they are more likely than men to already perform business expert and change agent roles in addition to the technologist role which may also provide an opportune route for women aspiring leadership positions in technology fields if they can overcome other barriers associated with working in male-dominated fields and environments (Adams and Weiss, 2011.) 6. Masculinity as the Norm Rönnblom and Keisu (2013) underlines the existence of a traditional representation of gender where women risk being essentialized and seen as problematic while men are represented as normal researchers in academia. Women are regarded as the second sex while gender is regarded as uninteresting in the academic context. Our research highlights similar tendencies in the private sector of R&D in Turkey. In the interviews, gender was narrated as insignificant in the workplace, a common strategy in male- dominated workplaces. Workplace was imagined as neutral and gender-blind:
- 307. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 293 “For the outsiders, women may seem more emotional, naive or vulnerable. But when we choose this sector, the problem of sleep disappears because we may be working 24 hours. Night shift is very common and we never regard it as additional time. I don’t see a seperation between men and women here. there is a task, there is a job, there is a person who chooses this and that person has to work under those circumstances.” (Yeşim, female, aged 31, computer programmer, technopark firm) Yet the literature highlights that the SET sector is both aggressive and competitive in nature, with career progression being dependent upon the masculine culture of unbroken employment and long hours mentioned also by Yeşim (Blackwell & Glover, 2008). The masculine norm and culture in the R&D workplace are supported by essentialist approaches and attitudes which result in implicit or explicit instances of sexual discrimination: “They cannot do it. The job is too stressful. There are too much responsibilities, there is too much stress and well, they cannot do it. I don’t know, I think that this is because of the educational system. It is about the way they orient people. It is all about the bottom, it is not about the sector. It comes from life, it comes from soil, this is something that the soil gives us. When we hire people, we give priority to male candidates. It is all that simple.” (Selim, male, aged 37, metallurgical and materials engineer, technopark firm) A group of male and female interviewees underlined that gender inequality in the R&D sector was not about the sector but about the educational system, about the gender gap that starts in the undergraduate level or society. In these kinds of common narratives, discrimination and/or segregation are accepted as a pre-market issue. Aside from constructing and shaping the “preferences”, the masculine norm functions to normalize the inequalities and discrimination in the workplace and make them invisible: “Men are more inclined to technology. There are situations in which women cannot use even the remote control. As we can discuss to what extent that is true… I don’t know, maybe it is because of the ways we were raised. In the workplaces that I have worked so far, we have been working with men. In those firms that we work, the managers are often men.” (Jülide, female, aged 40, industrial engineer, technopark firm) 7. Patenting The literature on gender, technology and innovation highlights a patenting gap. For instance in the American context, not only is the percentage of women obtaining patents lower than men, but it also ranks very low relative to the percentage of women in the STEM disciplines. The lower percentage of women obtaining patents appears to hold across sectors of government, academia, and industry (Rosser, 2009). Patenting in Turkey displays similar gender dynamics. As there has been no gender based data on patenting in Turkey, by counting each application indivually, we sorted the data of patent and utility model applications in Turkey in years 2010 and 2014 based on gender.
- 308. Ece Öztan andSetenay Nil Doğan / METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 294 Table 1. Patents in Turkey Number & Percentage 2010 2014 Women Men Sum Women Men Sum Patent 20 180 200 56 301 357 Utility Model 67 727 794 90 832 922 Patent (%) 10.0 90.0 200 15.7 84.3 357 Utility Model (%) 8.4 91.6 794 9.8 90.2 922 As such a method for data collection regarding the patenting activity is far from being the exaxt numbers, it aims to give us an idea about women’s participation in patenting processes. The ratio of women who applied for patents and utility models in these years was below 10% which is quite below the percentage of female researchers in the universities (41%), in the private sector (%24), female Ph.D. students (45%) in Turkey (Meulders & O’Dorchai, 2013: 31-33). 8. Conclusion: The Leaky Pipeline of Techno Innovation This study aims to explore gender in R&D and innovation in SET fields in Turkey. It aims to explore how the identity of innovator is gendered and how the field of innovation is sustained as a male-dominated field. The social/technical dualism work for the relegation of women to the less technical tasks while employing essentialist assumptions on women’s inclination towards technology while the masculine norm ensures that innovation culture is seemingly gender neutral and gender blind and normalizes the inequalities in the workplace. Working in tandem with the masculine norm in the workplace is a gender gap in patenting despite the high percentage of women with a Ph.D. degree in our research. The leaky pipeline of techno innovation supported by gendered subjectivities, culture and gaps in the practices of innovation gets more leaky as we explore the R&D entrepreneurship. Our interviewees pointed at the problems of the R&D sector in Turkey such as: the routine tasks in corporate firms which prevent innovation, Turkey’s role in the global map of innovation as the followers and applicants of innovation rather than producers of it, commercial mentality, the investment potential of the small firms and their distance from professionalism and the problems in forming open university-industry alliances as equal partners. All these problems associated with the R&D sector in Turkey contribute to the leaky pipeline of techno innovation that disadvantages female R&D employees and techno entrepreneurs in the commercialization of innovation.
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- 311. Efser Rana Coşkun/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 297 International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies Approaching Bosnian War in Light of ‘Violence Against Women’ and ‘Gendered Violence’ Efser Rana Coşkun* Bilkent University, Department of International Relations, Turkey Abstract In the discussion on violence, security and gender, different approaches allow us to analyze Bosnian War regarding different aspects. One of the aspects of Bosnian War that could be analyzed through these approaches is women insecurities. In order to analyze women insecurities during Bosnian war there are two main approaches that I shall assess in this paper to shed light on different perspectives on victimized women regarding systemic rape of women and torture. These are ’sexual violence against women’ and ‘gendered violence’. Through separately analyzing these two approaches in detail, this paper attempts to explore the significant merits of each perspective regarding women insecurities in Bosnian war. After giving a brief introduction on the main tenets of these approaches, in the first section, ’violence against women’ will be assessed to demonstrate what this perspective allows us to see. The second part will deal with ‘gendered violence’ to show the contributions of this approach to analyze women insecurities during Bosnian war. © 2015 Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Middle East Technical University Keyword: Bosnian War; Violence against women; gendered violence * Corresponding Author. Tel.: +90 5309751575 E-mail address: efser.coskun@bilkent.edu.tr
- 312. Efser Rana Coşkun/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 298 1. Introduction In the discussion on violence, security and gender, different approaches allow us to analyze Bosnian War regarding different aspects. One of the aspects of Bosnian War that could be analyzed through these approaches is women insecurities. In order to analyze women insecurities during Bosnian war there are two main approaches that I shall assess in this paper to shed light on different perspectives on victimized women regarding systemic rape of women and torture. These are ’sexual violence against women’ and ‘gendered violence’. Through separately analyzing these two approaches in detail, this paper attempts to explore the significant merits of each perspective regarding women insecurities in Bosnian war. After giving a brief introduction on the main tenets of these approaches, in the first section, ’violence against women’ will be assessed to demonstrate what this perspective allows us to see. The second part will deal with ‘gendered violence’ to show the contributions of this approach to analyze women insecurities during Bosnian war. 2. The Main Tenets of ‘Sexual Violence Against Women’ and ‘Gendered Violence’ In this section the main tenets of these two approaches will be addressed in light of the brief history of the Bosnian war and women insecurities in this era. The 1990s in the former Yugoslavia was the time of intense sexualized violence that ruined the lives of women and young girls as well. One of the biggest features of this terror was ‘rape camps’ that were established to torture and violate women. Since there are no reliable sources, the approximate number of women who were raped range from 20,000 to 60,000. Women were the ones most suffered from Bosnian war because they were victimized and marginalized. Many women were raped in front of their children and husbands to be humiliated. For this reason, from 1992 to 1995, the Bosnian war was the time of the transformation of individual bodies to social bodies in ethnic cleansing and genocidal rapes (Olujic, 1998: 31). The vast majority of women population in Bosnia were systemically raped by Serbian soldiers. Regarding systemic rape in Bosnia, ‘sexual violence against women’ mainly deals with material reality with respect to gender that can be read from sexed bodies (Shepherd, 2007: 243). Here the primary tenet is related to body politics and different representations of bodies. This perspective takes women and their bodies as stable and coherent subjects in light of materially identified gendered individuals in the wake of empirical perspectives in political and social life (Shepherd, 2007: 243). Hence, one of the main tenets of this approach, women bodies are the material realities which turned into territories of Serbian soldiers through systemic rape. Besides sexual violence against women, the conceptualization of power as a remarkable tenet leads to the emphasis on gendered violence. Moser (2001: 31) claims that there is a ‘gendered continuum of conflict and violence’ which is a consequence of the ways in which ‘gender is embedded in relations of power/powerlessness’. This approach concentrates on gender as a social construct, where sexed bodies are gendered according to variable matrices of gender norms (Shepherd, 2007: 245). This approach emphasized the insecurities on masculine and feminine bodies due to war. Yet, this paper aims at concentrating on feminine bodies and women insecurities in war. Reflections of masculine identities on women insecurities regarding nationalism and militarization will be assessed in following sections. 3. Violence Against Women & Body Politics The aim of this section is to correlate body politics and violence against women to unravel different
- 313. Efser Rana Coşkun/ METU GWS Conference 2015 Page | 299 representations of women bodies in the Bosnian war. In Shepherd’s words (2010: 6) “global politics is studied and practised by gendered bodies” could be a fruitful starting point to analyze the relationship between body politics and violence against women. In order to analyze different manifestations of body in various understandings of international relations, formulation of the body politics requires an in-depth analysis of body (Shepherd, 2010: 6). This will bring us to think about how bodies represent certain political norms, concepts and values. How violence against women becomes an instrument to harm or destroy these political values of the enemy is the significant part of this linkage. The Bosnian war exemplified how wartime rape of women was used as a weapon of war. Some groups analyze sexual violence against women in a self-explanatory way (Pankhurst, 2010: 149). This means that ‘rape as a weapon of war’ thesis could be found across different times and places (Pankhurst, 2010: 149). Yet, there is the other side of the coin which is related to collective and political elements beyond the sexual violence against women during the warfare. One of the elements as Steans contends (2010: 84) that women’s bodies play a central role in ‘boundary drawing’ and ‘identity fixing practices’. According to these understandings, the violenc