Essay by Kerem Aktaş

Everyday Turkish people wake up to news about violence against women. Rapes and murders are everywhere. Violence isn't the only problem women face either: Inequalities in the workplace and the justice system, safety, the identity society gave women and lack of education are some of the major issues women face in today's society.  Even though women are essential to our society, they are discriminated against because of the bigotry created by religious and cultural dynamics and stereotyping. 

Firstly, to solve these problems we first need to understand the reason behind them. Stereotyping that women suffer has two different reasons. One of them is the proverbs Turkish people use. These proverbs insult women and make them seem inferior compered to men. “ Don’t interfere with male work with dough in your hand” and “You will not be missing stick from woman’s back and baby from her belly” are two most clear examples of women being inferior to men in Turkish language. The first proverb means that women’s are not smart enough to deal with problems or jobs that man also happened to be deal with. The other proverb normalise husband abuse, rape and violated against woman. Woman who grow with this mindset thinks that when their husbands beat them it is the wife’s fault. Thinking like this also makes it that they don’t report it to the police or tell anyone about it. “And baby from her belly” this section of the proverb  means that woman’s only job is to be a mother. This inferiority in language causes bigotry to develop in children. The children then grow to be people who work as judges or directors in companies believing that women are inferior. Furthermore, stereotyping also causes woman to live lives that not they want but society forces upon them. They live as mothers and housewives even though they want to persuade a career.

Secondly, the religion and culture plays a significant part in the discrimination of the women. In Arabic culture women is thought to be inferior to men.Even a small boy has more rights and credibility than a adult woman. This culture was transferred to Turkish culture as well when Turks accepted Islam. In addition, since  girls are consider to be teenager at the age of nine. Due to this a lot of families in villages don’t sent their daughters to school but rather enforce marriage to older men upon them. 

To solve these issues Turkish people can do four things: Full democratic state, not discriminative education starting in kindergarten, severer punishment for violence and positive discrimination. With a full democratic state woman can speak for themselves with someone representing them in higher power. Due to this they can live more fulfilling lives with the state actually talking about their problems and finding solutions to them, also changes to the justice system can be made with more efficiency. Education starting in kindergarten would cause children to have awareness about women’s rights and therefore upcoming generations would also be aware about them. Thanks to this awareness an equal work environment can be created. Severer punishments to every type of violence or abuse would deter any possible offenders from ever committing such acts and create a safer environment for everybody. Positive discrimination, especially for girls in villages, would create an environment where woman can be best of themselves and have the equal rights.

In conclusion, women create a fundamental part of our society. In contrast to this they are segregated and thought to be inferior in comparison to men. This false notion is created by stereotyping that comes from our language, religious beliefs and traditions . To end this bigotry we must change our education, justice and governmental system also create environments that create equal opportunities for everybody, so that human race can reach it’s peak in both knowledge and science.