Women Workers in Turkey: Global Industrial Production in Istanbul by Saniye Dedeoglu

Author:Saniye Dedeoglu [Dedeoglu, Saniye]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor, Globalization, Industries, Political Economy, Social Science, Political Science, Anthropology, Business & Economics, Cultural & Social, Women's Studies, General, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781780760315
Google: e6D0DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 13169744
Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Published: 2007-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

PATRIARCHY, GENDER AND LABOUR SUPPLY IN GECEKONDU NEIGHBORHOODS OF ISTANBUL

The social meaning attached to women’s work is a reflection of the perceived role and place of women in a society where not only the community but also women themselves affect the way in which the meaning of women’s work is established. The invisibility and temporariness of women’s garment work are associated partially with the nature of the work women do, and partially with the way that the identities and priorities of women are oriented around their domestic roles, which are the signals of the meaning attached to women’s paid work in urban Turkey.

The dominant ideology of evinin kadını (women of their homes)1 overshadows women’s every paid activity and also their relationship with the labour market. This chapter continues the analysis of the supply factors conditioning female employment by looking at gender relations, women’s working identities and the social meaning of women’s work, and the justification of women’s paid work in Istanbul’s garment industry, and at how all these factors mediate women’s entrance into the labour market. This analysis will be dependent upon how women conceptualise their working experience and their roles and identities, and the ways in which traditional gender relations are challenged, renegotiated and modified by the strategic struggles adopted by women themselves and their communities when an opportunity of employment comes up.

6.1 Strategic Struggles for Power: Gender Relations

The prevailing ideologies of gender in Turkish society not only outline what it means to be a man or a woman but also affect the ways in which women’s garment work is made invisible. Women’s domestic roles, which assign them to motherhood and wifehood, suppress the way that labour market opportunities are undertaken and perceived by women. Emerging opportunities for informal work and the economic pressures to generate extra income are always challenged and negotiated through women’s traditional roles, which ultimately affect the meaning and value attached to women’s work.

One of the major theoretical contributions for an understanding of gender relations in Turkey came from Kandiyoti, with her concept of ‘bargaining with patriarchy’ (1988). In her analysis, the classic patriarchal family appears to represent the actual structural arrangements of family life even though it may vary in form and shape. It embodies the forms of control and subordination associated with the patriarchal family system in which women receive ‘protection and security in exchange for submissiveness and propriety’ and ‘adopt inter personal strategies that maximise their security through manipulation of the affection of their sons and husbands’ (Kandiyoti 1988:280).

Although Kandiyoti’s reference is mainly to patrilinearly and patrilocally organised peasant households, low-income urban households are organised around similar ideologies regarding gender and intergenerational relations. The pervasive male dominance in Turkish society is perpetuated by a social organisation based on the family unit (Duben 1982). Even with the urban relocation of many rural families, the Turkish family has retained its authoritarian and patriarchal character.

Despite the fact that families live in separate households and are nuclear in structure (Timur 1972; Güvenen 1999), the extended family remains a powerful cultural ideal (Kandiyoti 1988:278).

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