Married to Anatolian Tigers: business masculinities, relationalities, and limits to empowerment
Author
Akyüz, Selin
Sayan Cengiz, F.
Çırakman, Aslı
Cindoğlu, Dilek
Date
2019-09Source Title
Turkish Studies
Print ISSN
1468-3849
Electronic ISSN
743-9663
Publisher
Routledge
Volume
20
Issue
2
Pages
297 - 321
Language
English
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
85
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71
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Abstract
This paper examines business masculinities and relationalities of empowerment in the everyday life experiences of male entrepreneurs and wives of entrepreneurs in three urban centers in Turkey: Gaziantep, Konya and İzmir. We take gendered power inequalities as structural and relational, and empowerment as a complex, multifaceted process. Based on a relational understanding of gender roles, we scrutinize men’s and women’s decision making areas in an attempt to understand normalized and internalized patriarchal values and assumptions, as well as explicit or implicit challenges against such values. We argue that gendered experiences of entrepreneurs and women married to entrepreneurs offer a complementary analysis of nuanced empowerment strategies in the background of seemingly contradictory currents such as economic globalization, transforming masculinities, rising conservatism and reinforced gender hierarchies.