It sounded very strange to me at the time, and even a bit funny, I have to admit. But it has always sounded very strange to me that in a country like Switzerland, women’s suffrage came in 1971 -- and even in 1990 for one canton. But I suppose one of the reasons for this was women’s reluctance to have the right to vote.Unfortunately, few countries have a clean record when it comes to women’s rights and gender issues.
A recent World Economic Forum (WEF) report indicates that Turkey ranks 129th out of 134 countries in terms of dividing its resources and opportunities among men and women.
I know many women who are really struggling to construct a better social, economic and political environment for everyone, despite all the problems they face.
These wonderful and brave women are trying to implement new projects, accepting from the very beginning that the difference they will create will be little. Yet they still find it worth trying.
It is very normal to have ideological differences among women who are struggling for gender equality, despite their common enemy (the male-dominant culture) and despite their common solutions (education, etc.). But in the struggle for women’s right, there is a clash of generations that is even more strongly felt, especially in Turkey.
An interesting group of women, generally over the age of 45, emerged or, more correctly, started to become more visible since they decided to be more active. Sometimes they act like lone militants in the streets, on public transportation vehicles and in other public places.
They have this fear that within a couple of years, women in Turkey will be forced to wear headscarves, the republic will collapse and the country will be divided. For them, it is more preferable to live under a junta administration than a democracy in which the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has power. Of course these ladies are against the democratization initiative, they really don’t care if the children of some are dying or if a lot of women are suffering due to clashes in predominantly Kurdish-populated areas.
These ladies, while pretending to be defending the rights of women, have a habit of looking down on other women. They frequently say that they are “modern,” but their understanding of modernity is limited to what one wears. For them, both women wearing miniskirts and women wearing headscarves are outcasts. They can neither accept a headscarved woman driving a sports car nor a woman doing a “male job” such as civil engineering.
They also have this tendency to believe that no one should oppose them. While on the street when they suddenly start to criticize anything they wish, they seriously anticipate the approval of everyone around. If anyone objects, they think it is just because they are disrespectful to women and the republic, which these ladies identify with.
Observing them helps me understand my Swiss friend’s mother.
If these ladies are that fearful about the future, the government should take some steps to comfort them, but these ladies are fearful because they are concerned about losing their privileges, ones they were promised. The promise was: “You elite and select women of the republic, you will be educated to reproduce the establishment. If you do not ask to really be equal to men and if you do not try to change the male-dominant character of the society and if you only support men, you will be honored with certain privileges.”
So these ladies were secure in their own enclaves. They did not pay attention to the rights of other women. They looked down on feminists. When they were in “public” in the name of the women’s movement, they approached their own people with an Orientalist approach and harmed the future of the women’s movement.
If Turkey is in the 129th rank in the gender gap index, there are many reasons for this. The state did not take its responsibility seriously, the government is not sincere about the issue, there are legal problems. A female-friendly approach was not established, but the previous feminist generation, both because of the things they did and because of the things they did not do, is responsible for Turkey getting this ranking.
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