Local Power And Female Political Pathways In Turkey

This book explores the “Turkish paradox” – women’s lower representation in local politics than in parliament. By analyzing life stories of 200 female municipal councilors and party representatives, it offers a comprehensive assessment of what makes local politics in Turkey particularly inaccessible to women. It places women’s pathways within the cycles of exclusion, starting by political socialization, going through the candidate recruitment process and continuing after the election. The research presented here brings together gender studies and political sociology and offers novel applications of concepts including intersectionality and biographical availability. It covers all major political parties and diverse local configurations in Turkey, and reveals political strategies of women in conservative parties as well as the reasons behind the exceptionally high representation of women within the pro-Kurdish political parties. The book further sheds some light on the intricate relationship between women’s political activity and regime change in the context of democratic backsliding.

With an estimated population of 35 million, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without an independent state of their own. Kurds constitute about 20 percent of Turkey, the largest Kurdish population in the region. The history of the Kurds in Turkey is marked by state violence against them and decades of conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish fighters. Although the continuous struggle of the Kurdish people is well known, and the political actors involved in the conflict have received much attention, an increasing wave of scholarship is being written from the vantage point of the Kurds themselves. Alemdaroğlu and Göçek’s volume develops a fresh approach by moving away from top-down Turkish nationalist macroanalyses to a microanalysis of how Kurds and Kurdistan as historical and ethnic categories were constructed from the bottom up. Contributors look beyond the politics of state actors to examine how Kurdish workers, women, youth, and political prisoners experience and resist marginalization, exclusion, and violence. Kurds in Dark Times opens an essential window into the lives of Kurds by generating meaningful insights into the formal and informal ways of negotiating their power and place in Turkey; and therefore, it provides crucial perspectives for any endeavor to create peace and reconciliation in the country.

This edited collection explores how party politics impacts the implementation of gender quotas in political representation across Europe. Contributors identify actors, institutions, and cultural legacies shape how quotas are put into practice. The volume’s subtitle, Resisting Institutions, points to the myriad ways in which parties and other institutions in Europe over time have resisted the inclusion of women into politics. As voluntary party quotas and legislative quotas gained prominence, so did strategies to undermine them. At the same time, Resisting Institutions also indicates that gender equality actors have developed ways to counter such blockages and advance the cause of parity in their legislatures. 17 country cases explore the current state of quota implementation and the effects of confronting androcentric institutions.

This ethnographic volume features fresh research by junior scholars of contemporary Kurdish studies. The contributions are assembled around four themes: women’s participation, paramilitary, space, and infrapolitics of resistance.

Editorial Board: Ahmet Görgen Alp Arısoy Berrin Ceylan Ataman Ceren Avcil Elif Gençkal Eroler Elvan Karaman Fabio Grassi Gökhan Ak Lan Lo Nilüfer Narlı Paulette Schuster Savaş Biçer Tuba Demirci Zeynep Üskül Engin CONTENTS I. WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT: ITS IMPACT ON POLITICS, PUBLIC SPHERE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS The Power of Words: How Silent Spring Sparked the American Environmental Movement through Debate and Diplomacy – Jayashabari Shankar The Other Side of Male Dominance: Prohibition of Pants – Zeynep Özlem Üskül Engin and Dolunay Çörek Akyıldız Gender Mainstreaming and International Organizations: NATO Example – Suat Dönmez Gender Mainstreaming in Türkiye within the Framework of the “European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life” – Zeynep Banu Dalaman The Development of Civil Society and the Women’s Rights Movements in Türkiye – Ahmet Görgen II. WOMEN’S CHALLENGES IN SOCIETY Colonial Prejudice Hunting the African Woman: The Case of Southern/West Cameroon (1916-2022) – Charles Nda Agbor The Relationship between the Girl Child Marriage Problem and Gender Inequality: The Case of Türkiye – Ayşe Nur Çiftçi Chinese Women in Transnational Marriage Migration – In Two British Cities – Lan Lo and Xia Lin Gendered Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace in India – Naureen Bhullar, Chrysiynn D’Costa, and Ishani Roy Female Educational Leadership between a Rock and a Hard Place – Latifa Belfakir and Imane Zeryouh The Continuation of Gender Stereotyping and Patriarchal Mentality in the Post-Communist Albania – Enkelejda Cenaj The Effects of Gender Discrimination on Women’s Health – Şükran Başgör and Semra Elmas III. WOMEN AND LITERATURE Utopian Works by Two Feminist Writers: Herland and Yeni Turan – Senem Üstün Kaya Women Claim Agency and Subjectivity: Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade – Ferma Lekesizalin Reconfigurations of Female Gender Performance and Proto-Radicalism in Rachel Crothers’ A Man’s World – Furkan Tozan This book has been published with the support of Istanbul Topkapi University, Turkey.

This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country’s history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.

Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond offers a methodologically, theoretically, and empirically rich analysis of women’s empowerment in male-dominated societies, juxtaposing the Turkish case in comparative perspective. The volume explores institutional and societal obstacles against women’s empowerment in patriarchal communities, how women cope and bargain with patriarchy in such societies, and how they try to achieve better living standards for themselves and their families. It also pinpoints areas for improvement in women’s empowerment via institutional and societal change in the areas of education, economics, politics, and social life. Interdisciplinary contributors offer in-depth fieldwork analyses as well as rigorous statistical techniques. The multi-disciplinary and multi-method nature of the book provides both breadth and depth to the study of women’s empowerment and offers fertile ground for further research on gender politics. Interdisciplinary in nature, Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond will be of great interest to scholars of Gender Politics, Turkish Studies and Women’s Empowerment. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Turkish Studies.

Both yesterday's suffragists and today's feminists have battled for women to vote and hold office, and their successes have made it possible for countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Iceland, Liberia, and the United Kingdom to have female heads of state. Despite these notable advances, women are still largely underrepresented in parliaments and governments around the world. Why, after so many years of feminist struggle, are women still obstructed from full political citizenship by a glass ceiling? Manon Tremblay's 100 Questions about Women and Politics discusses electoral politics in Canada and abroad, focusing on women's rights to vote and run for office in legislative elections, political parties, voting systems, electoral quotas for women, and participation in parliaments and governments. Against a background of observations taken from academic research, Tremblay uses an innovative approach by dividing her book into 100 questions and answers to address a range of important issues. Are electorates sexist or lesbophobic? Are family responsibilities a real obstacle to women's engagement in politics? What strategies are available to increase the number of female politicians? Are gender quotas democratic? Once elected to office, do women represent women? How does women's political citizenship in Canada compare to that in other countries? A timely book on the unfinished work of representative democracy, 100 Questions about Women and Politics takes a comprehensive yet concise approach to demystifying the major issues dominating the study of gender and government.