Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond


Book Description

Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond offers a methodologically, theoretically, and empirically rich analysis of women’s empowerment in male-dominated societies, juxtaposing the Turkish case in comparative perspective. The volume explores institutional and societal obstacles against women’s empowerment in patriarchal communities, how women cope and bargain with patriarchy in such societies, and how they try to achieve better living standards for themselves and their families. It also pinpoints areas for improvement in women’s empowerment via institutional and societal change in the areas of education, economics, politics, and social life. Interdisciplinary contributors offer in-depth fieldwork analyses as well as rigorous statistical techniques. The multi-disciplinary and multi-method nature of the book provides both breadth and depth to the study of women’s empowerment and offers fertile ground for further research on gender politics. Interdisciplinary in nature, Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond will be of great interest to scholars of Gender Politics, Turkish Studies and Women’s Empowerment. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Turkish Studies.




Gender Equality and Tourism


Book Description

Does tourism empower women working in and producing tourism? How are women using the transformations tourism brings to their advantage? How do women, despite prejudice and stereotypes, break free, resist and renegotiate gender norms at the personal and societal levels? When does tourism increase women's autonomy, agency and authority? The first of its kind this book delivers: A critical approach to gender and tourism development from different stakeholder perspectives, from INGOs, national governments, and managers as well as workers in a variety of fields producing tourism. Stories of individual women working across the world in many aspects of tourism. A foreword by Margaret Bryne Swain and contributions from academics and practitions from across the globe. A lively and accessible style of writing that links academic debates with lived realities while offering hope and practical suggestions for improving gender equality in tourism. Gender Equality and Tourism: Beyond Empowerment, a critical gendered analysis that questions the extent to which tourism brings women empowerment, is an engaging and thought-provoking read for students, researchers and practitioners in the areas of tourism, gender studies, development and anthropology.




Voice and Agency


Book Description

"The 2012 report recognized that expanding women's agency - their ability to make decisions and take advantage of opportunities is key to improving their lives as well as the world. This report represents a major advance in global knowledge on this critical front. The vast data and thousands of surveys distilled in this report cast important light on the nature of constraints women and girls continue to face globally. This report identifies promising opportunities and entry points for lasting transformation, such as interventions that reach across sectors and include life-skills training, sexual and reproductive health education, conditional cash transfers, and mentoring. It finds that addressing what the World Health Organization has identified as an epidemic of violence against women means sharply scaling up engagement with men and boys. The report also underlines the vital role information and communication technologies can play in amplifying women's voices, expanding their economic and learning opportunities, and broadening their views and aspirations. The World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity demand no less than the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys, around the world." -- Publisher's description.




Muslimism in Turkey and Beyond


Book Description

This book identifies a new Islamic form in Turkey: Muslimism. Neither fundamentalism nor liberal religion, Muslimism engages modernity through Islamic categories and practices. This new form has implications for discussions of democracy and Islam in the region, similar movements across religious traditions, and social theory on religion.




Working Out Desire


Book Description

Working Out Desire examines spor meraki as an object of desire shared by a broad and diverse group of Istanbulite women. Sehlikoglu follows the latest anthropological scholarship that defines desire beyond the moment it is felt, experienced, or even yearned for, and as something that is formed through a series of social and historical makings. She traces Istanbulite women’s ever-increasing interest in exercise not merely to an interest in sport, but also to an interest in establishing a new self—one that attempts to escape from conventional feminine duties—and an investment in forming a more agentive, desiring, self. Working Out Desire develops a multilayered analysis of how women use spor meraki to take themselves out of the domestic zone physically, emotionally, and also imaginatively. Sehlikoglu pushes back against the conventional boundaries of scholarly interest in Muslim women as pious subjects. Instead, it places women’s desiring subjectivity at its center and traces women’s agentive aspirations in the way they bend the norms which are embedded in the multiple patriarchal ideologies (i.e. nationalism, religion, aesthetics) which operate on their selves. Working out Desire presents the ways in which women's changing habits, leisure, and self-formation in the Muslim world and the Middle East are connected to their agentive capacities to shift and transform their conditions and socio-cultural capabilities.




Rethinking Empowerment


Book Description

Rethinking Empowerment looks at the changing role of women in developing countries and calls for a new approach to empowerment. An approach that adopts a more nuanced, feminist interpretation of power and em(power)ment, recognises that local empowerment is always embedded in regional, national and global contexts, pays attention to institutional structures and politics and acknowledges that empowerment is both a process and an outcome. Moreover, the book warns that an obsession with measurement rather than process can undermine efforts to foster transformative and empowering outcomes. It concludes that power must be restored as the centrepiece of empowerment. Only then will the term and its advocates provide meaningful ammunition for dealing with the challenges of an increasingly unequal, and often sexist, global/local world.




Women, Migration and Asylum in Turkey


Book Description

This book examines the migration of women as gendered subjects to and from Turkey, using feminist research practices to explore a range of diverse experiences of migrant women as refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented or documented migrants. The collection includes contributions from researchers, practitioners, and migrants themselves to present a nuanced analysis that challenges binary divisions between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ migrants and highlights the political and social agency of refugee and migrant women in Turkey. Drawing on a rich body of original empirical and theoretical research the volume explores recent policy change in Turkey, the political and social influences that have shaped migration policy (both internally and globally), and how women migrants have been positioned within its changing refugee and migration regimes. Analysis of the Turkish experience of redesigning migration policy in a country with weak civil protection against gender discrimination provides important lessons, in particular for countries in the Global South that are under pressure from the Global North to control and manage migrant flows. This interdisciplinary volume offers gender-sensitive recommendations for policymakers and practitioners and will advance global debates on migration management and governance across the fields of sociology, social policy, anthropology, labour economics and political science.




Global Currents in Gender and Feminisms


Book Description

This collection examines the ongoing shared struggles of diverse groups of women in Canada and beyond focusing on a diverse range of themes to explore the centrality of gender and feminist praxis in western and non-western contexts.




Women's Economic Empowerment in Turkey


Book Description

Turkey has experienced growth in both the population and the workforce. However, female participation in the workforce in Turkey is extremely low, largely due to financial dependency and lack of higher education. The authors argue that greater research is needed to improve the economic position of women throughout the country, and this remains a challenge that must be fixed both culturally and socioeconomically. The book explores the significant gap between policy advancements, actual practices, and the impact of regional variety in the cultural structure. The authors suggest that this in turn has affected Turkey’s ability to implement changes and reform. Reform must allow women to pursue changes that will give them greater financial flexibility and freedom within the country. The authors demonstrate the concept and framework for women’s empowerment and explore the need for this. This book seeks to discuss the approaches and strategies for empowering women by outlining the strategies, policies and tools that women are using for their empowerment focusing on Turkey while comparing with other countries worldwide. It also brings several issues to the forefront such as equality treatment, political participation, social issues, the gender pay gap, the glass ceiling and gender (in)equality, the migration effect and education. Offering a multi-disciplinary exploration of the relationship and connection between employment, national policies, migration economies, entrepreneurialism and gender in present Turkey, this book is an invaluable contribution to the existing literature surrounding Turkish gender studies and will be of interest to both scholars and experts in the field.




Ottoman Women in Public Space


Book Description

Using a wealth of primary sources and covering the entire Ottoman period, Ottoman Women in Public Space challenges the traditional view that sees Ottoman women as a largely silent element of society, restricted to the home and not seen beyond the walls of the house or the public bath. Instead, taking women in a variety of roles, as economic and political actors, prostitutes, flirts and slaves, the book argues that women were active participants in the public space, visible, present and an essential element in the everyday, public life of the empire. Ottoman Women in Public Space thus offers a vibrant and dynamic understanding of Ottoman history. Contributors are: Edith Gülçin Ambros, Ebru Boyar, Palmira Brummett, Kate Fleet and Svetla Ianeva.