HIDDEN WAR AGAINST WOMEN

• Main Author: Şehriban Şahin Kaya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Social Sciences Research Society 2011-01-01
• Series: International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanity Studies
• Online Access: http://www.sobiad.org/ejournals/journal_IJSS/arhieves/2011_1/sehriban_sahinkaya.pdf

For the last couple of decades, there has been a dramatic regress in the women’seconomic, social and political positions in Turkey.The number of womenparticipating in job market decreased from 34.1 percent in 1990 to 23.5 percent in2009. Almost 85 percent of the working women are still stuck in traditionalfemale jobs. A diminishing representation of womenin politics and increasingviolence against women have been other features ofthis regression. At the sametime period, a transformation of Turkish media camewith the boom of the numberof commercial TV channels, radio stations, magazines and newspapers. Thisnewly transformed media did manage traditional gender roles to infiltrate thethoughts of women, majority of whom stayed out of job market. The images ofwomen created through the advertisements, TV serials, TV talk shows, andmagazines have been more altruistic family orientedtype than women questingfor equal rights. Today, more and more women watchTV programs, supportcosmetic industry, spend lots of money on clothing, and are very interested intheir body, value traditional gender roles and do not ask for equality. Recently,the scholars began to discuss the rise of conservatism in Turkey withoutaddressing the backward shift in women position invarious spheres of life. Allthese problematical issues mentioned above need tobe considered within asociological framework that should be able to showus the current situation ofwomen in Turkey. This presentation attempts to dothis.