Women and Public Space in Turkey

Selda Tuncer is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yuzuncu Yil University, Turkey.

Turkey's process of `modernization' developed rapidly during the second half of the twentieth century. New social and legal reforms were institutionalized and political and economic changes located the country as a more liberated, `Western-style' society. Women and Public Space in Turkey provides a historical understanding of women's experiences of this modernization between 1950 and 1980, a vital period in which their participation in urban public life expanded through higher education and employment. Selda Tuncer examines the precise conditions that enabled women to leave the home and reveals how they perceived and experienced urban public space and social relations. Drawing on interviews with two generations of women from Ankara, and using personal family photographs, the book provides invaluable insights into women in a predominantly Muslim society who are living in a highly secular social context. Tuncer specifically focuses on women's everyday experiences and discusses how the relationship between women and public space was actually controlled and regulated by different notions of `domestication', especially in the micro-politics of daily life. The book sheds new light on the gendered processes of nation-building, socio-cultural transformations, and the crucial connections between gender, modernity and the urban experience in a non-Western context.

Reveals how Turkish women experienced and participated in public life during the modernization process in Turkey between 1950 and 1980

Introduction2: Women, Nation-State and Public Space 3: The Story of the Field4: The Herstory of the City: Women's Everyday Life in Ankara, 1950 - 19805: Going Public: Women's Access to Public Space in Ankara 6: Women and Negotiated Spaces in Urban Everyday Life7: Across Generations: Shifting Moralities and the Cost of FreedomConclusion