ATATURK’S IMPACT ON THE STATUS OF TURKISH WOMEN AYSE KUDAT Speech prepared for: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 1991yar Ataturk's Impact on the Status of Turkish Women ayse Kudat Overview The subject of Ataturk's effect on women in Turkey has been well studied. On the whole, these impacts are viewed to be positive and large, going far beyond Turkey to women in other Middle Eastern countries. My own thoughts on this issue are somewhat more conservative. First, there is little doubt that Ataturk was a revolutionary thinker and a thorough reformist. He was well informed about the reform movements throughout the world and made every effort to bring Turkey up to par with other nations in many spheres of life. Of the many reforms initiated under his leadership, those which had roots in indigenous movements, those which were initiated by the masses themselves, were accepted most widely and rapidly. Secondly, at the time of his adoption of reforms concerning women, there was little organization from within women’s groups demanding these reforms. Then and since, there was inadequate ownership of these reforms by Turkish women themselves. Thus, while the stage was prepared, women's participation was not sufficiently forceful to sustain and develop the themes to put out a challenging play. Rather, Turkish women’s achievements are mixed and sometimes contradictory. Thirdly, there was little direct influence of Ataturk’s reforms on women in the middle east. Reforms, such as they were, came very late and many after Ataturk’s death. Moreover, with few exceptions the achievements of women in the Middle Eastern countries still portrays a poor image. As with Turkish women, Middle Eastern women are not well connected to global women’s movements except through a handful of well educated and sophisticated women of high socio-economic status. As such, the needs of vulnerable groups of women are inadequately defined and women's agenda rarely influences the development agenda. Backgrount There is probably no "beginning" to thought about women's rights - but in the modern era, many scholars believe that the French Revolution with its emphasis on freedom, equality and (brother)hood had a profound effect on the thinking of many people, including women, That event in 1789 led to major organizational efforts on the part of women early in the 19th century. Much of the effort of women in the first half of the 1800s focused on broad social issues, including improvement in the status of women but went beyond that to encompass additional topics, most importantly, the worldwide effort to end slavery. Women were active in taking up issues of injustice to themselves and others. These inter-related concerns, what we might now call human rights issues, stemmed from the rhetoric of the French Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, and the Enlightenment thinkers of the era. In that century in the U.S., the specific focus on women’s issues culminated in a first - the famous Women’s Rights Convention which met inSeneca Falls, New York, in 1849. Women who attended this event created a Declaration of Women’s Rights which sounds surprisingly modern even today. That document focused on full rights of citizenship, but also addressed other issues of equal opportunity for women. ‘The emphasis on related issues, such as abolition of slavery, continued however until that abhorrent practice was finally ended formally, in the case of the US by the Civil War, 1861-65. American women fully anticipated that the ending of slavery, with the vote given to freed Black slaves, would also see the granting of the vote to women. It did not happen, however, and after that setback there was a period of relative quiescent on the American women’s movement scene. The suffrage struggle heated up again as the 19th century neared its conclusion, with much of the most publicized activities in Europe. In the last decade, women of the United Kingdom in particular were very active in the struggle for advancement of women, focusing on the right to vote. Much of that activity has been recorded by women historians; some of it was violent with destruction of property. Several women lost their lives. Many were imprisoned; hunger strikes in prisons were common. The struggle spread to other European countries and across the Atlantic. Notable is the close connection between women of many nations in this common battle for their rights. Many crossed the seas to work with one another; correspondence between these early fighters for women's rights is voluminous and well preserved in various archives of women’s history In the U.S. the suffrage movement reached its peak, as in Europe, in the early decades of the 20th century. Women demonstrated both enthusiastically in large public parades and attempted to negotiate with political leaders on behalf of the cause. These years were a period of much controversy about the appropriate role of women. The publications and particularly the cartoons of the era show dramatically the strong emotion caused by the debate about the appropriate “place” for women. World War I put a temporary pause to much of the struggle, as most women assumed patriotic positions, supporting their governments and putting aside their own issue for a period in the interest of what many felt to be a larger cause. Others, however, continued the struggle and a schism of sorts developed between women. Obviously there were always some differences of opinion, in terms of political ideologies, appropriate strategies, etc. - many of which sharpened considerably in the World War I era. The first truly international meeting of women occurred in this era atound the issue of peace. In 1915, women of nations at var with one another met in The Hague, Netherlands, to protest the var, to call for its end, and to create what became the highly respected Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, an international organization still very active today. The var, however, was the flashpoint which finally turned the tide in women’s favor. In the UK, the vote was finally granted to women before the war was actually over, having been promised earlier by major political figures. In the UN, the constitutional amendment which finally allowed women3 full voting rights was passed by Congress in 1919, then passed by the requisite number of states in 1920. From that point, the major obstruction to women's suffrage which had characterized all of earlier history was shattered. A succession of nations changed their constitutions, laws and customs and a wave of opening of the voting booth to women swept across the world. It is against this historical background that the history of the Turkish women's rights issue must be seen. In 1929, the first Latin American nation to allow women to vote was Ecuador, followed by Uruguay and many others in the decade of the 1930s. A few held out for a very long time; Mexico, for example, did not allow women to vote until 1958. Similarly, other nations of Europe for the most part quickly followed the lead of the UK, Canada and the US, with others only later joining the trend. And to complete the picture, in the years following the Second World War, as the former colonies shed the yolk and became independent nations, virtually all included women as full citizens in their new constitutions and legal frameworks. Only a very few nations of the world today, found in the nations of South West Asia, do not conceptualize women as full citizens, and most of those do not give voting rights to all men either. Women’s suffrage is now almost universal. In Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates women do not have the right to vote, but neither do men. Kuwait appears to be the only hold-out against suffrage for women in particular New Zealand was the first in 1883 to give women the right to vote. It was followed during the first 15 years of the 1900's by Australia, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. By 1928 most European nations had given women the right to vote. But many long-established states, particularly those which gave suffrage to men before 1920, had waited years before allowing women to vote. Ruth Sivard shows that for 26 countries which responded to a questionnaire, the time elapsed between men’s and women's suffrage ranged from one to 134 years, with an average delay of 47 years ¢ Turkish Scene It is important to understand that the 1920‘s were critically important in women’s networking throughout the world and in women's consolidation of their demand for equal citizenship. It is clear that Ataturk was well informed of these world wide developments and the concrete forms these took in Europe, the USA and Canada. When in 1934, Ataturk gave women the right to vote 26 countries had already done so, including Sri Lanka, Mongolia and several other Third World countries. Turkish women used their first votes in the general elections of 1935. During the fifth government, there were 18 women parliamentarians in Turkey.4 In these early years Western European parliaments had 2.4 percent female participation, while the ratio for Turkey was 4.5 percent. Today, many European parliaments are composed of 26-40 percent women, yet Turkish women’s parliamentary participation is only 1.7 percent. Of all the 7,089 Turkish parliamentarians to date, only 125 have been women. When we look at the government itself, of the 67 cabinet to date, 64 did not have any women members. One cabinet had an appointed female minister, another had the first elected female minister, and the present cabinet has one elected and another appointed woman member. Despite the fact that all policy decisions are of direct concern to women as much as to men, Turkish women have so far taken little interest in politics at either the national or local levels. In view of other global trends, Turkish women’s relative passivity in local politics is particularly surprising. To take politics seriously, to participate in society at all levels on an equal footing are goals that women should set out for themselves, Rights may be granted but not adopted unless women themselves put the demand on their own agenda. A democracy without full participation of women is only half a democracy; but the will to participate in the political process ought to originate from women themselves. Otherwise, such efforts as the establishment of women’s branches of political parties will remain as political tactics to attract female votes in a country where such votes are tied largely to votes of male heads of families Despite Turkish women’s lack of participation in political life, there are achievements as well. Education is cited often as an important one. Universal education helped narrow down the gender gap, but at the secondary level Turkish women lag behind women in middle-income countries. Turkish women’s participation in higher education is far behind that of men; women are also highly concentrated in stereotypical female disciplines with little market value, Oil-rich countries of the Middle East, on the other hand, come close to European countries in women’s participation in higher education, but with unbridgeable gaps in the labor force and overall social participation. Labor force participation of Turkish women, especially outside the agricultural sector, is low -- one of the lowest among the OECD countries. Women constitute a decreasing proportion of the labor force (as the share of agriculture in the economy falls, so does female labor force participation -- from 70 percent in 1955 to 33 percent in 1990). The work force is markedly segregated and women’s share of non-stereotypical jobs has sharply fallen in comparison with earlier periods of the Republic A new package of legislation is awaiting parliamentary debate for the past 7 months but there is no public discussion of the content of this package. The package includes cash payment to women for the services they provide to the family. A progressive, yet highly impractical proposal such as this, comes out of a society where municipalities officially finance construction of whorehouses and where news media proudly announce that the third year in a row the owner/manager of a whorehouse chain in Istanbul broke the income tax record. However, unless the Turkish women understand the contradictions that define their lives, unless women in large numbers organize5 around improving their social status, existing legal rights may not be fully Practiced. Nor will the de jure and de facto situation defined by Article 151-158 of the Civil Code giving men the leadership of the family would change. Gonelusion Turkish women live in an environment far more supportive of their program than women in most of the Middle Eastern countries. The secular reforms of Ataturk was the single most important factor which allowed women to enjoy the fruits of this program. By the same token, sustainability of further progress goes hand in hand with the sustainability of a secular society. It is therefore necessary for Turkish women to consolidate their ranks in support of secular democracy. aKudat: cap 2: \ake\tuswomen,