Engendered emotions: gender awareness of Turkish women mirrored through regrets in the course of life

Abstract

In this article, the results of a qualitative study on gender awareness of Turkish women mirrored through regrets in the course of life are discussed. The study composed of life history interviews and focus groups interviews with Turkish women, who were 1960-1970 graduates of various Girls' Institutes and working as schoolteachers and academics showed that the women reflect on their lives in gendered terms. The women's regrets arose mainly in relation to three domains: work, marriage and motherhood, which revealed that women separate their feelings of regret regarding marriage from the satisfaction they derive from motherhood. In the evaluations of the past, an ignored women's history surfaces within the context of modernization reforms in Turkey, which provided women the means of "standing on our own feet" without depending on men. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.