Essay by Zeynep Dilara Poyraz

In underdeveloped countries women and girls are almost sentenced to slavery and beatings for most part of their lives. The first and most important step to get rid of this situation is for girls not to be deprived of their educational freedom. However, under these conditions, women will need to gather the strength to stay away from ignorance and abuse, and ensure that the first step to freedom and other steps to be taken are consolidated and facilitated. 

If we look at the issue from the eyes of a woman living in Turkey, I think we should separate the idea into two parts. Violence against women and girls, and gender inequality at work. Starting with the violence against women it can be easily seen that the amount of rising cases of violence and harassment especially after the cancellation of the Istanbul contract which had the main purpose of preventing violence against women . According to researches, one out of every three women in Turkey has been exposed to violence at least once in her lifetime and the situation is getting worse day by day. In addition to all these cases of violence, the inequalities that women are exposed to in business life signals the need to take action on this issue as soon as possible. The vast majority of women in Turkey work in traditional modes of production in rural areas making the proportion of women working in the modern industry very low. In view of this, women are the most affected by problems such as unemployment, inflation, low income, which in turn has an impact on the lower parts of society more because of the stereotyped job description of women. Girls born in less developed societies have been subjected to constant oppression as children. When they start taking the first steps toward puberty, marriage is the leading topic that is initiated, followed by a talk about procreation without any consideration of the wishes of the young girls. As if all this responsibility isn’t enough, they also want the offsprings to be males beacause a boy child means power to them. In other words, women will continue to live in a cage made of taboos in their so-called free lives until they die if we don’t change our attitude towards this system. And I believe that change can only occur if the standard of education is raised in societies. But the “education” that I am referring to is not only about positive science lessons. A “good education” should teach people how to think critically and having a world view as well. Gender equality should be taught as a lesson in schools. It’s important to instill this feeling into children as early as possible because the older they get, the harder it is to teach them something owing to the realization of their own truths. If we believe in ourselves and start to taking actions now we can break these taboos that have been created for centuries . We can illuminate all women and girls under the dark shadow of others in the light of education.