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Women happy about affirmative action, demand more
The government plans to bring a constitutional reform package to Parliament that includes positive discrimination for disadvantaged groups, including women.
Hülya Gülbahar from the Association for Education and Supporting Women Candidates (KA-DER) said women have been working to achieve this goal for a very long time. She said that in 2004, when constitutional amendments were being drafted, they demanded positive discrimination but ended up in criminal court because they had claimed in their campaign that not implementing positive discrimination is anti-democratic and outdated. These sentences were considered to be insults, but they were acquitted of any wrongdoing three years later.
“Inserting positive discrimination into the Constitution is important not only for Turkey but also for the world. For the first time in history a party considered conservative is accepting the principle of ‘positive discrimination’,” Gülbahar told Today’s Zaman.
She also said Turkey had signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and that Article 90 of this convention calls for it to be implemented as an internal law, but said this did not turn out to be the case at all in Turkey. “Inserting positive discrimination into the Constitution will hopefully give legal assurances to full implementation,” she said.
But she added that a change in mentality is needed to implement any real positive discrimination. “The Constitution already addresses the responsibility of the state toward implementing equality between women and men, but 92 percent of workers in public economic organizations are men. There is not a single woman governor; this means the state is not fulfilling its responsibility. But from now on at least, implementing positive discrimination can take place,” she said.
Selma Acuner from the European Women’s Lobby agreed that adding positive discrimination to the Constitution is good but not good enough.
“The Law on Political Parties and the Election Law should be amended to ensure that women participate in political life. These changes should aim to ensure the equal distribution of resources,” Acuner told Today’s Zaman.
She added that it will no longer be possible to say “no” to women’s demands that are based on positive discrimination. “When women ask for kindergarten facilities, they will not hear that this is against the principle of equality. Or when there are demands to implement special measures for girls who do not attend school, no one will be able to claim that this is against equality,” Acuner said.
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