The Story of Being a Woman by Aynisa Uğurlu

Being a woman in Turkey, which is an ancient geography hosted by different civilizations and cultures  from east to west, means nothing but the struggling. Although this diversity may seem fascinating  from the outside it contains the struggles of thousands of women in different regions. Shouting as ‘’I  am here too ‘’ to show your presence. For some, being a woman is being grateful for being able to  live. 

Turkey was a country where women received a pink identity card as soon as they were born. Here  discrimination against to women starts as soon as they are born. Maybe when you are a little girl, your  family ‘subconsciously’ begins to place stereotype sentences like “sit like a girl”, “run like a girl’’, “The  girls stay at home, what are you doing until late? “. A princess always needs a prince even in your  mother’s fairy tales. These sexist ideas are always in the back of your mind involuntarily. Time passes,  you grow up to be a ‘beautiful girl’, you dress well and go out but people look at you with evil eyes,  because you are dressed too less for them, after all, girls shouldn’t dress like that otherwise guys will  get aroused. Now you pay more attention when you are out at night, you don’t want to go to side  streets too much because you are afraid of living the fate of the murdered women you see on TV every  day. A woman’s life in Turkey is shaped by these fears. Some women cannot even choose their  profession. Job that requires physical strength is not suitable for them because women are very naive  and weak.  

What about business life? In most work places, men and women don’t even get equal pay. In addition,  employers do not employ most women. This causes the economic freedom of women to be restricted.  In this way the number of “housewives with a diploma” is increasing. 

The biggest problems faced by women especially in rural areas and eastern regions of Turkey are the  problems brought by early age marriage, custom, and other out dead traditions. Girls who are still in  middle school – high school age are cut off from their education life and become victims of tradition  and girls are forced into marriage with men they have never met. [1] In 2020, about %88 of girls aged  16-17 were married to 4-33 years older men. They are forced to become mother at a very young age.  Many “young women” die during childbirth because their bodies cannot cope with this process. Some  of these little women grow up at home with their children and serve their husbands, instead of being  at school desks.  

Moreover, these women exposed to psychological and even physical violence if they do not give birth  to son. Sometimes women’s husbands make a second marriage for a boy child. It is truly degrading  and anachronistic to murder the hopes and dreams of girls and give them such a life. 

This is the story of being a woman in Turkey. You are constantly limited, you shape your life according  other people, even you are killed by someone you do not know or who says that he love you very  much when you are not guilty. When the murderer comes to the court in an elegant dress and he says  that he is so sorry and be regret, his sentence reduced or he is released. The biggest difficulty that  complicates the lives of women is patriarchal system, country administration, and the inability to  properly implement the rights to given women. [2] Turkey became the first country sign the “İstanbul  Sözleşmesi” in 2011 to prevent violence against women and domestic violence. In 2021 the “İstanbul  Sözleşmesi” was terminated due to government’s sexist approaches misunderstanding such as  damaging the social structure. With the cancellation of the contract, we have seen that the value given  to women by the government has gradually decreased. In a developing country like Turkey, it is still a  big problem for women not to have a place in society. However, Turkey is one of the countries that  gave women the right to vote and to be elected, thanks to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1934. I believe  that, thanks to the increasing feminism movements in our country, the trainings given to women and women's solidarity, we will gradually destroy these sexist thoughts and remind them that women exist  in society. Hoping for a more modern and egalitarian Turkey.