"Tech-Women In Turkey" by Melis Seven

Once, our beloved leader Ataturk said: “ There is a way we can walk more confidently 

and more accurately: to make the great Turkish women a partner in our work.”. 

The word empowerment is defined as “the process of becoming stronger and more 

confident”. From the very beginning, women have put their capacities in the background because 

of the pressure coming from their environment. All around the world women have been 

struggling to empower their rights like protection, education and having a say in society. Turkey 

is one of the countries that have made progress to accomplish women empowerment but still on 

many issues, like education, Turkey needs to improve. There is technology developing 

proportional to the evolving society day by day. In this article, I will talk about what my country 

offers to empower women throughout their journey about expanding technology and science. 

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According to the Turkey Statistical Institute (TUIK) between October 2018 and October 

2019, six hundred and thirty-two thousand women became housewives and still, this percentage 

of non-working women is increasing day by day. In general, the recruitment rate for men is 

much higher than for women. In the technology sector, this ratio is incredibly low for women. In 

the 1980s, the proportion of women who chose computer engineering was 37%, today this has 

dropped to 18%. The main reasons for the decreasing ratio of women in technology are the need 

for role models, mentors, and gender inequality dilemmas which are on the rise. This sector 

brings with it some prejudices created by society coming from the continuing patriarchal 

perspective in Turkey since women are considered potential mothers, maternity leave is seen as a 

deficiency. Similar permits are given to men abroad to prevent this but in Turkey, this is a 

desperate case. Another minus point for women in Turkey is the preference of male employers, 

who are more in percentage when compared to female employers in technology, is to hire male 

employees, which leads women to feel insufficient. There are initiatives whose goals are to 

empower women from the beginning and help them to walk on the right path by giving them the 

possibilities and opportunities that society avoids about their focus on the science and technology 

sector. 

In recent years, technology started to play a quite critical role in our lives, so education 

related to this area and the job opportunities are on the rise. There are active foundations in 

Turkey to empower women in technology like “Information Systems Audit and Control 

Associations” (ISACA) and W-tech. ISACA’s aim is to increase the visibility of the problems 

women experience in technology and to increase employees. ISACA launched a movement to 

increase women empowerment in technology called The “SheLeadsTech”, which is functioning 

in eight regions where the foundation is active. Another foundation whose very popular is 

W-tech, which is based on empowering women who want to focus on science and technology. 

For example, to increase the participation of women in this sector W-tech cooperates with the 

relevant public institutions and promotes education in mathematics, science, and physics in girls’ 

primary and secondary education. Detecting talent at a small age and helping girls in need to 

draw their career paths is a colossal development for women empowerment. If we take a closer 

look, we would see that only 9.91% of women are actively working in the technology sector in 

Turkey. The existence of initiatives like ISACA, W-tech and some leading companies like 

Turkcell and Vodafone which have projects to empower women in education are also helping to 

increase this percentage. 

Empowering women in the science and technology industry is not at a satisfactory level 

in my country because even though there are growing, vigorous and functioning foundations who 

are working to improve and protect women’s rights from head to toe, the employment rate is 

much lower than it should be. Turkey, with its patriarchal approach, has become a troublesome 

place to live for women. The prejudice perspective that society permeates, retains women from 

reaching their goals. I think that to increase the percentage, companies should have a department 

focused on women’s inclusion and empowerment. These departments should control the 

employment rate and equalize the level of women with men. Also, they need to cooperate with 

women in need so they don’t feel scorned or left out. I want to finish with a quote Ataturk said, 

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"If we need science and technology for our society, both men and women should acquire 

them equally."