Turkish Women Analysis

The modern economic growth began with the Industrial Revolution in the Northwestern countries and followed by the rest of the world with various degrees during the last two centuries of the world history. As it fosters the rise of per capita incomes and standards of living, so it fosters ideological, demographic, agrarian revolutions which paved the way for the women to became part of the new world economic system as principal actors. In that sense, the history of women could not be written properly without the history of the modern economic growth and vice versa. By the mid-nineteenth century, the lives of many women began to differ profoundly by revealing the complex patterns of economic and social transformation, which enabled the women

Firstly, the Turkish women’s experience of practicing professions will be explained in a historical perspective of the modern economic growth by referencing to the Ellen Fleischmann’s periodization of the women’s movement, which overlaps with the economic periodization in Turkey. Fleischmann divides the history of the Middle Eastern women’s movement into three stages. The first one is awakening stage in which the women and men began to provide awareness about women issues as well as social and political practices they had been through. In Turkey, this stage corresponds to the era of industrial revolution, the globalization and liberalization of the Ottoman Empire in 1820 to 1914. The second stage of women’s movement is the adoption of nationalism as a liberating discourse that enabled women to act in nationalist struggle. This stage was crystallized during 1908-1922 under the rule of the Union and Progress Party with their nationalist economy policies. The last stage is the state feminism that was experienced during 1923-1935 and it redefines women’s positioning in the society after the wars. In Turkish experience, the women’s ongoing emancipation movement was practically halted in 1935 with the intervention of the state. Therefore, the periodization takes this history as milestone. While explaining the main economic characteristics of these

The second purpose of the paper is putting the emancipatory policies of the new Turkish state under question by analyzing the course of women’s movement and their contributions to the economic life. The rest of the paper is organized as following. Firstly, the key features of the three periods of the modern economic growth will be explained chronologically. Secondly, the involvement of the women to the economic activity throughout these periods and under which political and social circumstances will be asserted. Lastly, the answer to the question of how these periods affected the women’s movement and emancipation will be