"Black and A Turk: Ayse Bircan, Part VII In this installment of Black and Turkish, Ayse Bircan talks about the situation with women in Turkey and also about her time living and working in London.
One of my sisters didn't finish university, got married, had daughters and now works as a secretary; the other finished university and is a high school English teacher. My elder brother--he's twelve years older--was a driver but has stopped work now, he is pensioned.
In Turkey women share the same problems of oppression as women anywhere, but their position is changing as a result of industrialization. Old attitudes have begun to change. Before the 1960s there were different attitudes towards women. In big cities women can go to school and do whatever they want, but it's not the same everywhere. Women can also vote in all parts of Turkey; they have the right to vote and to be elected, which is before in some European countries. Because in the war of independence women fought along with men, when the new country was established (it was the Ottoman Empire before) Ataturk gave women all these rights--yet there are many barriers. There are laws. For example, if a man doesn't sign that his wife can work, she can't work; it has to be written on paper. But the situation doesn't arise in the first place, since women, being oppressed, anyway ask their husbands. After the industrialization of the 1960s many women went into the workplace. Their labour was needed because it's cheap and a woman generally isn't a danger for a boss. In the textile industry especially, most of the workforce is female. In the women's organization I worked in an area that has the country's highest population of women workers. It was in Bursa, where there are many textile factories, 90 per cent staffed by women; only the managers were men. Our organization lasted four years before it was banned, but during those years it expanded very quickly. "
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