Essay by Selin Şensoy

To be existing as a woman. By all definitions: to be alive, to be recognized as who you are, to be accepted and appreciated, is the biggest challenge for a Turkish woman. Some may say that women have it all in 21. Century, and even may argue that feminism is useless because women gained all their rights on paper. Doubtless, women rights improved at extreme levels in the past century, and discrimination in the constitution reduced significantly. However, changing a way of thinking is much harder than changing a law. Prejudice is not just some legal document you can alter in the written paper. Sexism is so much more than that. It is the brutal consequences of a male-dominated population for centuries, which we encounter daily. It is the fear every woman feels while walking on an empty street at night. It is in every workplace where women are less paid than men. It is in every woman's memories who suffered from their gender. 

In the greatest era of technology and science, along with the most civilized humans ever existed, people are still suffering because they were born as women instead of men. I realized the adversity of living in a world which isn’t created for you at a very young age, and have kept realizing it ever since. When I was five, returning home with the school bus, my mom asked me if the bus driver did anything to me. But I didn’t do anything wrong I thought, why would he harm me? At the age of 9, the times society hasn’t started to plant gender roles in my brain yet, the boys from my school never let me play soccer with them because they say I would be suck at it. But they never saw me playing, I thought, how would they judge me? Then, like everybody else, I started to understand that there is a superior gender and I am not included. There is blue and there is pink, there is strong and there is weak. Later in life, as my mind started to grow instead of my body, I had an epiphany: I can be blue, and he can be pink. Strength is just a state of mind, despite any psychical features. I consider myself lucky to be able to reach that conclusion and know my rights as a female citizen. 

Sadly, some girls in the small towns of our country can’t go to school, thus, they don’t get a chance to learn their rights as a woman. Mostly their parents force them to quit school, so they can help their moms with the house. Moreover, when they reach the “proper age”, which is 12-15 in most cases, they get married against their will to an adult man. In return for their daughter, the father gets money from the groom! It feels like a scene from a horror movie, however, this is a reality for others. Statistics prove that Turkey is the number one country of child marriages in Europe, and the number one country in women murders in the world. 

The belief that symbolizes women as the property of men should have stayed at middle age, where it belongs. This sick belief somehow survived and sneaked into our lives, rooted so deep in society even made women forget their values. According to Euronews, thirty-eight percent of women faced physical or emotional violence, which makes us the number one country of woman victims. Unfortunately, very few of those filed a legal complaint against their abuser. This more than proves that laws are just a paper if people are unaware of their rights. While it was almost impossible to watch the news and didn’t encounter a woman victim, 269 women got murdered by their loved ones in 2019. 

Here we are, living in a society which in ignorance is superior to all other weapons. In a society that betrays its mother, sister, daughter, and wife. However, the history of humanity is not over yet. I sincerely hope people will value and respect each other's rights in the future. By educating young minds, sexism will leave our land completely. All we need to do is remember what the founder of Turkey, Marshal Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, said: “Oh hero Turkish women, you are worthy to rise to the skies on our shoulders.”