Contemporary Turkey Cannot Be Truly Modern Unless Discrimination against Women is Stopped at Workplace and School
And the women,
Our women:
Their terrible and blessed hands,
Their small and delicate chins, their large Eyes,
Our mothers, wives, lovers,
They are dead, as though they have never lived.
Their place at our tables,
Their place at our homes,
Walking behind the oxen,
Them we will abduct to the mountains,
On their account we will sit in jail,
They are those who walk behind the plow,
Toil over the grain, tobacco, and fire,
Crowd the markets and cut the trees;
Them we will conquer in the cowsheds
With shining knives,
On their heavy and round thighs,
On their clinging ear hangings,
Women,
Our women.
Nazım Hikmet Ran, “Our Women” (1960)
In every part of the World, women's status is mostly low when compared to men. The parent reason of this difference between women’s and men's status could be that it is women who give birth. But this parent reason could be passed over with society's help. However, in general, society -not only men but also women sometimes- strengthen the disadvantages of women and discriminate them. Actually, devaluating and discriminating women is against human rights and cannot be tolerated. Human rights are "the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law."(wikipedia.org) However, most of the time women's freedom is restricted, their equality is disregarded and they are made to be a minority group although they constitute one half of the Turkey's population. In Wikipedia, about minority, it states “A minority is not necessarily a numerical minority — it may include any group that is disadvantaged with respect to a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth and political power.” Therefore, in Turkey, although the percentage of women is equal to -even a little more than- men, women can be considered as a minority group because they are disadvantaged with respect to man especially in education and in employment. Some values and taboos limit their freedom of choice and life style.
Education is one of the most significant area that women experience discrimination because it gets much more easy for men to be dominant on an uneducated group. In Turkey, there are many factors that negatively impact the education of women in Turkey such as the general lack of interest in women's education, traditions, patriarchal ideas, women's motherhood and housewife duties, marriage at young age, the belief that education contributes nothing to women's future, low female employment rates, educational costs. These are general reasons that make women a minority group in education and these reasons could be divided into two parts: the thought that education of women is unnecessary and something dangerous; and the belief that women's education is not economically a good investment.
Tragically, some families, especially those in the east of Turkey, consider women’s education as unnecessary, even dangerous for their traditions. They do not want to send their daughters to school because their traditions are their top priority and an educated girl may go against their traditions. To give a specific example, in their traditions, girls are pushed to marry in their early ages by their family because an educated girl may refuse this, however an uneducated girl does not have any chance but to practice their traditions. Besides, they do not consider education of girls as necessary since they are not educated either and so they do not know its importance for females' private lives, for their children and for the country.
Some families make discrimination between their daughters and sons by reason of economic gain. One of the reasons of this is that generally girls do not work, stay at home and do house works so their education is not economically necessary. Another reason, girls leave the family when they marry and they do not contribute to the family’s income while boys do contribute even after they marry. Therefore, almost every family gives boys priority for investment.
One of the problems facing Turkey is illiteracy but the percentages of illiterate women and men are not the same. The rate of illiterate adult women in Turkey was 60.3% in 1980, 35.7% in 1985, and 31.0% in 1990. The illiteracy rate of men was 25.5% in 1980, 12.4% in 1985, 10.2% in 1990 (The Status of Women in Turkey). Adult literacy rate, in 2000-2004, was 20% for women and 5% for men (unicef.org). Despite the gap between illiterate men and women is decreasing year by year, there is still a significant difference in contemporary Turkey. The low rate of literate women is one of the key indicators of her status in society, defining the degree of her education and individual freedom in public and private life and it proves that she is a minority.
After education, employment has also very crucial role in women's life. Woman is a minority at workplace, is always dependent on men economically. Women's economic dependency makes men more powerful and women weaker in every other field of their lives. According to the Turkish national report of “The Fourth World Conference on Women”, about permanent and seasonal migration of men because of poverty in rural areas, "women pass their lives waiting for their husbands who come home once in a while."(The Status of Women in Turkey) This is a significant example that presents women's dependency on men. While women in Turkey generally do not work and stay dependent on men, there are also lots of difficulties, lots of discriminations that women face in employment starting from the difference in wages of men and women but indeed, discrimination of women at workplace is manifested not only in the remuneration but in promotion, kinds of jobs and work conditions as well.
There is always a plenty gap between the wages that women and men earn. For example, in industries where the number of female workers is larger such as the food industry the women's wages are 55.1 percent of men’s; in tobacco industry, 60.5 percent; in textile industry 75.4 percent; in clothing 72.4 percent (Makal, 146). The hourly wages of female workers insured by the Social Security Institution are 61.4 percent of male workers according to the 1994 Wage and Employment Structure Statistics of the State Institute of Statistics (Türk-İş, 1999, 394). This wage difference between men and women exists in most of the branches of employment but in those branches where there is not a difference in wages; discrimination of women emerges in promotion.
Discrimination in promotions of women at workplace is very effective on the difference between men and women's status. It contributes men's power and dominance over women. Banking sector provides many examples on discrimination of women in promotion. In one of the interviews, an employee expresses her views as fallows:
"A woman will inevitably need maternal leave or medical leave during pregnancy, delivery and afterwards. She will then be away from her job for a certain period and miss out on some opportunities. There are general examinations at the bank every 3 to 4 years. Colleagues having reached a certain position take part in them and are promoted. We have many female colleagues who couldn’t take part in the examinations because of their pregnancy or delivery and whose chances for promotion have been weakened" [29 years old, married, university graduate] (Eyuboglu, 62).
These prejudices and negative attitudes towards female employees are wide spread all around Turkey. In another interview, a female employee says:
"There is no difference between the net wages of men and women. But there are differences in the compensations we receive. For example there is a compensation you receive when you earn points depending on your aptitudes. But there are some points that are totally left up to the decision of the manager. (...) Men have the priority when it comes to these points. Our assistant directors meet to give us points. Even if you, as a woman, have better qualifications, men always get higher points. They favor men. They say ‘He’s a man, he supports a family’. My assistant director once expressed this to me by saying ‘come on, what do you need the money for?’. Both male and female managers believe a woman has some material support anyway." [36 years old, married, university graduate, assistant to department manager] (Eyüboğlu, 181)
As observed in the example, places where wages are equal do not mean that there is not discrimination. Discrimination of women at workplace can emerge in many kinds of forms one way or another.
Studies conducted in this issue indicate that the kinds of jobs that women get are also negatively affected by their gender role. A good example for this is the banking sector because a large number of women with high educational levels are employed in this sector. During the hiring process, the most obvious discriminatory practices were: Hiring women in general as ordinary employees and men as experts with higher chances of management positions; loading routine work upon women because they are considered to be more patient; placing good looking women at the front desks as a showcase and not employing women as inspectors (a position with more control power and prestige). Women were generally asked in interviews not to have any children (Eyüboğlu). A woman has related her experiences and views on these issues as follows:
"We spoke to the manager. ‘Do you have any children?’ he asked. I said I have two. He asked ‘Do you want any more? If so, I won’t hire you.’ I replied ‘No, I’m not planning to have more.’ ‘Well then, we’ll get this thing arranged’ he said. The number of women starting out as clerks is so high. None of my male colleagues started as ordinary employees. Account expert, inspector... all good posts, and now they are all directors, deputy directors. (...) Men always have a better status" (Eyüboğlu, 64).
This woman’s views actually reflect many others’ views. There is lots of similar situations, lots of victims of discrimination.
While the discrimination of women at workplaces is manifested in different forms like remuneration, promotion, kinds of jobs; discrimination of women couldn’t be prevented even in the work conditions. Women get less benefits of working than men like health insurance and social security. Because of patriarchal structure, women’s health insurance does not cover her parents unlike men. Young girls and women who have been provided with work after getting their certificates from the Turkish Employment Agency’s courses on computer aided accounting, textile and tourism, are generally employed without social security although they were employed in workplaces in the formal sector (Akhun, 127). Moreover, men are provided permanent stuff positions when women work in temporary positions with fear of losing their job any moment (Koray, 160-161). In many places of Turkey, women experience the discrimination in work conditions, as well as social stereotypes of women as week creatures who cannot be trusted, nor take responsibility.
Reflecting on the information given above, women in Turkey have to face up with many unequal situations in their education lives as they are facing many others in their workplaces and these unequal situations lead women to be a minority group while men to be a majority. Cultural and traditional values stand between girls and their prospects for education. In most of the places in Turkey boys are given priority when funds for education are limited. Girls may be forced to marry young, drop out of school and dedicate themselves to housework. These unequal situations are very obvious in many statistics like the illiteracy rate of women.
Employment is the second major area that women face discrimination. In employment, women face discrimination at just about every workplace in process of hiring, promotion, remuneration, and work conditions. Women in the workplace are often placed in positions of inferiority or treated as being less capable of doing the same work that men do. Many single women are generally not trained because they are viewed as temporary employees who were only there since they marry. Women are very rarely given equal wage as men, even though most of them do the same work.
To destroy these barriers between women and their right of equality both in education and employment, first of all we need to remove the prejudice against women. Everyone, the very fact that educating girls is necessary to the development and prosperity of the nation and every citizen, must understand it. Providing equal education to girls is the essential and compulsory step to overcome the discrimination against women. To sustain this, schools’ fees and other costs associated with education can be eliminated, the quality of education can be improved to keep girls interested, secondary school opportunities need to be expanded and government should increase support for girl’s education. Then, it would be easier for families to send their girls to school. Then, educated girls can help individuals, families and communities to build a better future like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk said:
"There is another path which we can follow more securely and straightforward: to let the great Turkish women participate in our work; to conduct our life jointly with them, to make the Turkish woman a partner, an associate, an assistant and supporter of the man in the scientific, moral, social and economic domains. Turkish women will also become imbued in science and technology and will go through all levels of education, which men undergo. Thereafter, in social life, the women will march along with men and they will support and help one another."
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