Female Turkish students' perception of patriarchy in Turkey's higher educational settings

• In Event: Critical and feminist analyses of policy and media discourses

Proposal

Introduction
Since its inception in the early 1970s, the concept of patriarchy has undergone considerable transformation. Over the past four decades, feminists identifying themselves with varying schools of thought have striven to comprehend different forms of patriarchy and its interaction with other social structures and systems such as capitalism, race and class (See for example, Feldman, 2001; Hunnicutt, 2009; Johnson, 2014; Millet, 1969; Mitchell, 1974; Moghadam, 2006; Walby, 1990). However, for the purpose of this paper presentation, I shall refer to Walby’s (1990) understanding of patriarchy as a system of social structures and arrangements in which men are entitled to dominate women both ideologically and structurally.
Patriarchy has ancient roots in the Middle East. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Noble Prize laureate, asserts that patriarchy does not merely connote masculinity, but it refers to a culture that is built upon inequality (as cited in Eftekhar, 2015). One of the countries in the Middle East in which the culture of patriarchy is prevalent is Turkey. Turkey is considered as a part of ‘the patriarchal belt’, which includes North Africa, The Muslim Middle East, and South and East Asia (Caldwell, 1978; Kandiyoti, 1991). Dildar (2015) contends that although modernization has changed the façade of patriarchy in Turkey, there are still “strong remnants of patriarchal relations and norms in Turkish society” (p. 40). In a similar vein, Akman (2013) asserts that being deeply embedded in almost every societal and state structure in Turkey, patriarchy maintains the male-dominance in both public and private spheres. Thus, it appears that although Kemal Ataturk formally introduced gender parity in the 1930s, and gender equality-laws have been advocated for almost a century (Kaser, 2008), the culture of patriarchy is still a bitter reality most Turkish women struggle with on a daily basis (Coşar & Yeğenoğlu, 2011; Kandiyoti, 1991; Sakalli, 2001). In the view of this brief literature review, this phenomenological pilot study examined female Turkish students’ experience of patriarchy in Turkey in general, and its existence in the country’s higher educational settings in particular. The research questions developed for the purpose of this study were:
• How do participants recount their personal and professional experiences with regards to patriarchy in Turkey’s higher educational institutions?
• What strategies, if any, they have applied to cope with patriarchy in Turkey in general and the country’s higher educational settings in particular?
• What are their sentiments of the current and future status of female Turkish students at the tertiary level education in Turkey?
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework for this qualitative, phenomenological study comprised two overriding theoretical components: 1) Theories of marginalization, mainly drawn from a) Simone De Beauvoir’s the second sex, and b) Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and 2) Theories on power and resistance borrowed from a) bell hook’s notion of margin as a space of radical openness, b) Gramsci’s concept of counter-hegemony, and c) Foucault’s theory on power and resistance.
Research design
Hermeneutic phenomenology was used to explore the phenomenon of patriarchy as experienced by the participants who had done a part of their tertiary education in Turkey and are now furthering their studies at three different Canadian Universities. As I had experienced patriarchy in Iran’s higher educational system first-hand, I strove to bracket herself to elicit rich and descriptive data. This was mainly done through suspending her past knowledge of the phenomenon under study.
Data collection
Data collection was done through semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Three female Turkish students currently doing their Ph.D. in three Canadian universities were recruited for the purpose of this pilot study. Two of the three participants were selected through purposeful sampling. In seeking the third prospective participant, I employed ‘snowball’ sampling technique.
Interviews and data analysis
All interviews were done in Turkish, the official language of Turkey, and then translated into English. Moustakas’s (1994) method of data analysis was employed to develop formulated meanings which provided a description of the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of the phenomenon. These structural and textual descriptions were integrated into primary codes and then into themes which were used to provide an in-depth and composite description of the phenomenon, the experience of being a woman in Turkey and a female student in the country’s higher education system.
Findings
The major theme emerged in the data was the rise in patriarchy in Turkey. All three participants posited that the APK government was not neutral to gender issues and women’s education and held Erdogan’s government and his gender-biased policies responsible for the growth of patriarchy in different spheres of their lives. They also considered his government’s policies as a push factor for female Turkish student to seek further education abroad. The gendered policies of the APK government, as they argued, reinforced the gender ideology, placed women at a disadvantage in Turkey’s tertiary education, and negatively affected their participation in the country’s labor market.
Significance of the study
The issue of patriarchy is a widely explored topic in sociology and feminist studies (Feldman, 2001; Hunnicutt, 2009; Johnson, 2014; Millet, 1969; Mitchell, 1974; Moghadam, 2006; Walby, 1990). There is also a strand of literature on patriarchy in Muslim-majority countries, as well as a few studies on the issue of gender inequality in Turkey (Akman, 2013; Caldwell, 1978; Coşar & Yeğenoğlu, 2011; Dildar, 2015; Kandiyoti, 1991; Sakall, 2001). However, in the literature that I have reviewed, patriarchy in Turkey’s higher educational settings has received almost no attention. Therefore, this pilot study was conducted in the hope that it would open new windows to future research opportunities on the issue of patriarchy in Turkey and other Muslim-majority countries’ tertiary education.

Author

• Mariana Shekarian, University of Ottawa