ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shifting Perspectives on Engineering, Gender, and Middle-Class Formation: Early Women Engineers in Republican Türkiye

• In Event: Technical Professions and the Making of Middle Classes: Transnational Perspectives from the 19th to the 20th Century

English Abstract

This research examines how the Early Republican (from 1923 onward) modernization process in Türkiye reshaped engineering, gender, and contributed to the emergence of a new middle class. During this period, engineering began to redefine its scope and gradually took shape as a professional occupation symbolizing the nation-building project shaped by modernist ideals. It also transformed gender perceptions in the profession and opened the doors of engineering to women through “education” in the 1920s. Early women engineers who dedicated themselves to the Republic’s nation-building project described their work “as if it were a national duty,” contributing to the emergence of a new middle class. Although the modernization project did not explicitly aim to create a middle class, it nevertheless gave rise to an emergent class of “ideal citizens” defined by modern, secular, and national values. As the state encouraged education, engineering, teaching, and medicine, a new middle class—structured around bureaucratic and professional occupations—emerged as an unintended yet inevitable outcome of modernization. This group, sharing a common sense of purpose, was practicing their professions as if fulfilling a national mission. Particularly engineering, which was dominated by men, played a key role in economic development and also in shaping national identity. However, the admission of women to engineering education in 1927 marked a turning point, paving the way for a new phase in Türkiye’s modernization. The professional experiences of first-generation women engineers provide crucial insight into the social and cultural construction of gender and class during this transformative period, demonstrating the shifting perspectives on engineering practices.

Author

• Gül Aydın, History of Science and Technology Department. Istanbul Technical University