Policy options

Policy options

The forces of customary laws, traditions, prevailing prejudices and religious pressures continue to undermine progress in human development and play a major role in relegating women into the private sphere, away from jobs, education and good healthcare, as well as public service opportunities. Women continue to belong to multiple layers of social realities that shape their lives. They often belong to collective identities – ethnic, religious, local, regional and international – in addition to being citizens of the nation state. In other words,

women have a ‘multi-layered citizenship’. 4 In Turkey, this fact is observable in several forms: in rural communities, women’s lives are frequently influenced by local and ethnic traditions and by customary practices, which are often promoted by politically influential religious groups. Honour killings continue to be prevalent among ethnic communities, and many young women and girls are forced by their families to marry at early ages and to much older men in order to save their families from poverty and debt.

POLICY

Like other Muslim societies, women’s identity in Turkey often becomes the arena where power and politics converge. Women’s bodies and the way they dress, cover and uncover their hair become the public issues over which political battles are often waged. This observation is therefore important for the identification of new policies that would bring about desired changes in women’s lives. Some suggested areas for policy interventions that policy workers, government and civil society organizations could work on jointly in order to respond to the problem of women’s marginalization in Turkey are as follows:

• Human rights: recognizing women’s rights as human rights. This includes

protecting and promoting the human rights of both women and men. It also means fighting violence against women, trafficking in women, forced prostitution and crimes of honour; promoting free choice in matters of reproduction and lifestyles; and granting migrant and minority women equal rights.

• Representative democracy: the persistently low representation and

absence of women from decision-making at all levels of social, cultural and political life is a major policy challenge in which intensified efforts are needed.

• Economic independence and education: the position that men and women

have in the economy is in many ways crucial to the balance of power between them. Fighting poverty and the feminization of poverty is significant in this regard. This is why gender equality should be specifically targeted in education. Education involves the ways in which societies transfer values, norms, knowledge and skills, as well as individual and social attitudes. It is crucial that education systems and the elements that constitute them – teachers, schools, textbooks, research institutes and education regimes – empower both girls and boys, taking care to counterbalance existing gender hierarchies. Media professionals can be a target group here, since they may have a very powerful position in the transfer and consolidation of norms and knowledge.

• Gender-blind areas: more attention should be paid to the so-called

gender-blind areas, such as education and health, unpaid family labour, legal discrimination, low wages, violence, social security and women’s rights. Gender has to be a central feature in all areas of social policy.

• Citizen action: giving voice to women’s needs and concerns can force

changes in public policy. The universal principles of equality and human rights and their far-reaching implications for the lives of women cannot

be disregarded and must be buttressed by country-wide debates on social policy.

POLICY CASE STUDIES

Question: Mock policy decision exercise

13.3 The UNDP has made €10 million available to launch a new programme aimed at tackling gender inequality in Turkey in the next five years. A committee of eight people have been invited to decide on the programme specification, budget allocation and timeline of the programme. The committee members are: representatives from the General Directorate of Women’s Status and Problems; representatives from the women’s NGOs; sociologists, economists, political scientists and lawyers specialized in constitutional, civil and criminal law and citizenship rights; the Turkish Minister of Education; the Turkish Ministry of Labour and Employment; the Minister of Health; the Minister of Justice and Security; the UN Resident Representative; the head of a women’s shelter; and a female member of parliament or representative of the parliamentary commission on gender equality.

Students are invited to choose a role and draft a 5-page programme specification to address gender inequality in Turkey. Your programming document should also include a description of how you are going to use the €10 million budget in the five years and a justification of the budget allocation.