Abstract
Shaping Gender Policy in Turkey: Grassroots Women Activists, the European Union, and the Turkish State begins with an historical analysis of actors’ roles within the gender policy discourse and agenda setting in Turkey from the 1980s through 2009. In this discussion, Gül Marshall identifies the roles of women’s organizations as essential policy actors within the contexts of increasing globalization and transnationalism within the European Union. The author analyzes the development of a gender regime in Turkey following the decline of the Ottoman Empire, finding that “contradictory state policies” supported the development of state feminism within the contexts of modernization and membership within the European Union (p. 16).
Marshall discusses the ways in which gender mainstreaming policy was implemented in Turkey following the Beijing Platform for Action. Gender equality in Turkey had been historically framed in economic terms, but the Beijing Platform shifted the policy focus to a more comprehensive framework to encompass citizenship rights within the nation-state (p. 36). Marshall employs a critical feminist perspective to highlight the social, political, and legal barriers restricting women’s agency in Turkey. The implementation of gender mainstreaming policy in Turkey failed to address these inequalities substantively, which in turn, empowered the development of activist, feminist grassroots organizations.
Discussion then turns to the development of feminism in Turkey through grassroots women’s organizations following the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This analysis suggests that feminist grassroots organizations used the CEDAW provisions as a way to leverage pressure against the state (p. 66). Marshall’s analysis identifies the ways that gender policy is constructed and contested in Turkey during its process of joining the EU. The final chapter evaluates the intersections of transnational, national, and grassroots policy actors on gender equality and citizenship, and suggests emergent directions of gender policy development in Turkey (pp. 106, 140).