Browsing by Subject "Womens status"
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Item Open Access Item Open Access Money-earning activities and empowerment experiences of rural migrant women in the city: the case of Turkey(Pergamon Press, 2002) Erman, T.; Kalaycıoǧlu, S.; Rittersberger-Tılıç, H.Synopsis — This article investigates empowerment in relation to money-earning activities in the context of rural-to-urban migrant women in poor families in Turkey. Acknowledging the exploitative character of employment accessible to migrant women, it asks whether working migrant women gain something in their families in return for their economic contributions. The article points to the traditional role of men as the heads of the family and family honor (namus) as the cultural basis which acts against the empowerment of migrant women in Turkish society. It attempts to understand empowerment as articulated by the women themselves based upon their lived experiences. While doing so, it examines women’s positions in the family with regard to their role in the intra-family decision making, their degree of control over their earned money, and male violence in the family. It further discusses whether or not the experiences of migrant women can be considered as empowerment, and in this way it aims to contribute to the theoretical development of the concept ‘‘empowerment.’’Item Open Access Neighborhood effects and women's agency regarding poverty and patriarchy in a Turkish slum(Sage Publications Ltd., 2008) Erman, T.; Türkyilmaz, S.This paper aims to understand the interplay between the neighborhood (spatial) effects of poverty, ethnicity, kin, and patriarchy, and women's agency in the context of an inner-city slum in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. It is based on a field study that focuses on the experiences of women residents - that is, rural migrants known for their dependency on neighborhood spaces - and their grown-up daughters who were raised in the city. The neighborhood context - namely, the social and physical isolation of the site, the limited access to urban institutions, and the growing risk of crime - has a negative impact on women's lives, restraining but not determining women's agency. Women's struggle for agency in this context is contingent on other factors, including whether they live in ethnic clusters and whether their husbands are working, as well as urban experience and individual biography. © 2008 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.Item Open Access On resillience and response beyond value change: transformation of women's movement in post-1980 Turkey(Elsevier, 2011) Ozcurumez, S.; Cengiz, F. S.This study examines the nature of, and reasons for, the transformation of the women's movement in Turkey in the post-1980 period by focusing on the origins, rationale, organization of two women's organizations and their interaction with political institutions. It seeks to answer two questions: in what ways do the post-1980 women's organizations differ from those of pre-1980 in Turkey? What factors have played a role in this transformation? In addressing these, this study critically examines two propositions put forward in the general literature on transformation in movements: emergence of postmaterialist values and changing political opportunity structures. Relying on evidence from Turkey, this study proposes three alternative factors adding nuance to these propositions in the general literature: the restrictions imposed by the 1980 coup on social movements bearing new frames of reference by activist women, the changing values and ideas of second wave feminism, and the limits of state-centered modernization for the women's movement in Turkey.Item Open Access Overcome your anger if you are a man: silencing women's agency to voice violence against women(Pergamon Press, 2016) Akyüz, S.; Sayan-Cengiz, F.This study traces the relation between male violence and masculinist norms that attribute political agency exclusively to men. Through critical analysis of a recent campaign initiated as an effort to fight violence against women in Turkey by addressing men as the only agents endowed with agency to solve the problem, we explore the ways in which this discourse risks marginalizing women who seek empowerment through women's solidarity. We uncover three patterns: (1) the assumption of a "cultural particularity" in Turkey nested in the traditional family structure which should allegedly be left unquestioned; (2) glorification of values attributed to the masculine; (3) taking violence as an individual problem of "anger management." We argue that this campaign is inimical to the aim it declares because by marginalizing feminist efforts to question the social and structural patterns of male violence, it deprives women of political agency essential in the struggle against this problem. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.Item Open Access Rendering responsible, provoking desire: women and home in squatter/slum renewal projects in the Turkish context(Routledge, 2017) Erman, T.; Hatiboğlu, B.This article is situated at the intersection of urban restructuring, cultural conservatism and neoliberalism in the Turkish context to understand the new subject formations of poor women as they are relocated to high-rise apartment blocks in slum/squatter renewal projects by the prospect of homeownership via long-term mortgage loans. It contributes by showing the gendered effects of urban transformation on poor women as neoliberalism and conservatism interact. It draws upon two ethnographic studies that reveal women’s experiences embedded both in neoliberalism and patriarchy. In neoliberalism, women’s participation in the informal job market was promoted as they were made responsible for contributing to mortgage payments, and they were brought into consumption as they were provoked the desire for good homes via furnishing, and in patriarchy, women’s traditional roles in social reproduction were demanded in spite of their new roles and responsibilities. The study ponders women’s differentiated negotiations with patriarchy which resisted radical challenges when the family and the home framed women’s new responsibilities and desires. The rising conservatism rooted in Islam in Turkey, which prioritizes the family over individual women, created the conditions for it. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Item Open Access Reproductive citizenship in Turkey: abortion chronicles(Elsevier, 2013) Unal, D.; Cindoglu, D.This paper discusses the gendered nature of reproductive citizenship in contemporary Turkey through reading the abortion chronicles and exposes the utilization of women's bodies and subjection of women to demographic state policies. To this end, we focus on recent abortion debates originating from Prime Minister Erdoğan's statement on May 25, 2012 that suggested that “every abortion is a murder”. Our paper is a qualitative analysis of the arguments of the members of the parliament following PM's statement on abortion. We documented and contextualized the recurrent themes; (1) abortion as a rhetorical tool, (2) trivialization of abortion, (3) medicalization of abortion, (4) abortion in the cases of rape, (5) abortion as an economic imperative. As a result, we unravel the gendered discursive limits of “pro-abortion” arguments in Turkey and reveal the frameworks within which the political debates are shaped when women's bodies, sexualities and reproductive capacities are at stake.Item Open Access Vulnerable identities: Pious women columnists' narratives on Islamic feminism and feminist self-identification in contemporary Turkey(Elsevier Ltd, 2015) Unal, D.This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study on pious women columnists' negotiation of feminist self-identification in contemporary Turkey. Given the rise of the anti-feminist gender politics under the pro-Islamist AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) [Justice and Development Party] rule, it discusses how pious women columnists as crucial intellectual figures in the public sphere interpret feminism, Islamic feminism, and feminist self-identification. In this frame, the main aim of this study is to put forward the complexities of pious women columnists' positions in the public sphere and how this positionality affects their narratives about feminist self-identification in contemporary Turkey. Making use of the theoretical perspective provided by concepts such as "positionality" and "situatedness," this study concludes that negotiation of identity categories always takes place within the frame of reference, the contours of which is mapped out by one's position in the power configuration in society. Moreover, it brings into the open that the dialectical openings of Islamic feminism in pious women columnists' narratives can enhance the feminist coalitional politics in contemporary Turkey. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.