This study focuses on the relationship between women&rsquo / s work and women&rsquo / s liberation and emancipation from male domination by examining, within a feminist epistemological and methodological standpoint, the personal and occupational experiences of women doing professional work in Turkey. The aim of this study is to make a conceptual discussion by referring to the field of professional work and the particular form it takes in the Turkish case. Patriarchy at professional work, which operates differently than it does in waged work, has been approached with a socialist feminist standpoint. However, socialist feminist conceptualisation of patriarchy at work has been interpreted with a special focus on different forms of patriarchy. According to this, patriarchy is an incomplete formation which manifests itsef in different actual forms. Due to its changing and fluid nature it is maintained in different social practices. This interpretation of patriarchy with the notions of &quot / manifestation&rdquo / and &ldquo / practice&rdquo / provides for conceptualising the contextual features of patriarchy without being lost or dispersed in the contextuality of the patriarchal operations. It connects different contexts that arise from regional, religional, ethnic, racial, or class-based effects or social, economic, political and historical conditions without reducing them to a generalised sameness. In this context, women&rsquo / s becoming and being professionals in Turkey in the early republican period appears to be a significant example. In Turkey, Kemalism appears to be the practice which determines not only the professions but also the conditions of women&rsquo / s entery to the public realm as educated professionals. In this connection patriarchy is manifested within the interacting practices of professionalism and Kemalism. As the research design of oral history narratives of 18 women and some other biographic and historical sources indicates, women internalised professional values above and beyond Kemalist values together with their patriarchal contents. Although being professional has a certain liberating effect on women&rsquo / s lives they had to deal with patriarchal manifestations within the practices of professionalisma and Kemalism.

Efforts for promotion of women&rsquo / s entrepreneurship in Turkey have growing ever-more noteworthy in Turkey, in parallel to the other countries&rsquo / experiences. These efforts are ranging from creation of shared workshops by civil society organizations, entrepreneurship trainings, shared sales places to establishment of business incubators. Correspondingly, the actors involved in these activities are getting diverse. Women&rsquo / s organizations, state organizations, private enterprises, chambers and national-international development foundations are developing their own models and strategies for supporting women&rsquo / s entrepreneurship. These efforts are all can be categorized within the framework of development practice and be considered as a new strategy. As a development policy strategy women-focused entrepreneurship support activities are significant when compared with other employment generation aimed development programmes in terms of the number of project and programmes implemented and the multiplicity of the objectives they are acknowledged to serve. These programme and project based efforts targeting development of women&rsquo / s entrepreneurship are stated to have objectives of increasing women&rsquo / s employment and developing their productivity, alleviating women&rsquo / s poverty and contributing to women&rsquo / s social empowerment. In this work, it is argued that according to the objective prioritized over others, it is possible to diagnose three different paradigms guiding the practice of different actors. In this vein, economic efficiency oriented, poverty alleviation oriented and empowerment oriented approaches to women&rsquo / s entrepreneurship support. A similar conceptualization is also offered by Mayoux (2001b). This work explores different approaches to women&rsquo / s entrepreneurship support issue in Turkey using above described categorization and discusses their assumptions and implementation-process-consequences comparatively. The analysis is substantiated upon the data of 17 semi-structured interviews held with the representatives of the organizations widely involved in the area, published and unpublished reports reached and the archival data on the practices of the primary actors in the area.

This thesis is designed to analyze the relations between the Egyptian women&rsquo / s NGOs and the state in Contemporary Egypt through the interviews conducted with members and administrators of eleven selected women&rsquo / s NGOs based in Cairo. The main aim is to show how these NGOs with different aims and different working areas build their relations with the state, what kind of problems they face and how they cope with them as well as, if there are any, elaborate the relation patterns between the state and different women&rsquo / s NGOs in different fields. The sample of the research consists of twenty-seven women, members and administrators, from eleven women&rsquo / s organizations based in Cairo. The women&rsquo / s organizations that constitute the subject of this research study were selected out of the leading advocacy, research, charity and development NGOs in Cairo. Within this framework, the thesis is mainly based on the qualitative data of the in-depth interviews and the interpretations of the responses given by the interviewees. On the other hand, in order to better analyze and understand existing relations between the state and women&rsquo / s organizations in contemporary Egypt, women&rsquo / s activism and NGOs and their shifting relations with the state will be examined historically as well.

The main purpose of this study is to understand the organizational structures of Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s NGOs and explain the network mechanisms of them in the context of new social movements. This study is based on a social movement research / thus, both organizational structures and network mechanisms of Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s NGOs are explained and analyzed in terms of the features of new social movements, to answer the question of &lsquo / whether Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s NGOs are potential and possible actors of a possible Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s movement in Turkey&rsquo / . The fieldwork of the present study was conducted on Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s NGOs, which were selected according to a purposive sampling. 4 NGOs were selected, of which founders and the active members are all Islamist/Islamic women, from 4 cities of Turkey, One NGO was selected from each city. The semi-structured interviews and deep interviews were the main data collection techniques used to get information about their organizational structures and network mechanisms. The responses were analyzed through the issues of organizational diversities, three different levels of network mechanisms, and networking types in the context of formation a new social movement. As network mechanisms, the three levels of networks defined in the study: relations with the state and local governments, networks with the NGOs outside the sampling group and networks among the NGOs inside the sampling group, in the framework of the role and potential of Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s NGOs to form an Islamist/Islamic women&rsquo / s movement.

Especially recently, cooperatives occupy the global agenda as efficient organizations that contribute to mainstream development goals. However, cooperatives, which may also emerge as grassroots organizations, could create an alternative through empowering women socially, economically and politically. In this respect, this study investigates the impact of women&rsquo / s cooperatives on women&rsquo / s empowerment in urban Turkey. Empowerment Approach composes the theoretical framework of this study. Primarily, the mainstream development approach, Women in Development approach and Gender and Development approach are analyzed critically which are the precursors of Empowerment Approach. Later, Empowerment Approach is analyzed, and benefiting from postmodern approaches that emphasize the importance of local ways of knowing and doing, empowerment is defined as a process that fulfills practical and strategic gender needs through power within, power with and power to, which are generative forms of power. Through field research conducted in Istanbul and its periphery, I concluded that: 1) Women&rsquo / s conceptualization of empowerment overlapped with my conceptualization of power with and power within. However women did not mention power to as power or empowerment. 2) Rather than practical or strategic gender needs, women mostly fulfill psychological and social needs through cooperative involvement. This category emerged as a third category that should be added to practical and strategic gender needs framework. 3) Women&rsquo / s cooperatives empower women through power within and power with, which in turn mostly fulfill social, psychological and practical gender needs. Power to is not revealed through cooperative membership which is in fact a sin qua non aspect of empowerment.

ABSTRACT UNDP&rsquo / S APPROACH TO WOMEN&rsquo / S RIGHTS: THE CASE OF TURKEY Devlet, Yelda M.Sc., Department of Gender and Women&rsquo / s Studies Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Yakin Ert&uuml / rk December, 2006, 152 pages. This study has focused on UNDP&rsquo / s approach to women&rsquo / s rights particularly in Turkey. In order to provide a context for the discussion of the role of the UNDP in Turkey on the realization of women&rsquo / s rights, the thesis examines the emergence of women&rsquo / s rights discourse within the international arena and its repercussions in Turkey. This has facilitated the understanding of (1) the emergence of a women&rsquo / s rights movement at the global level, (2) the spread of the idea and perception of &lsquo / women&rsquo / s rights&rsquo / movement in Turkish society, and (3) the transformation of the approaches related to women&rsquo / s issues within the Turkish context. in the light of the support of the UNDP programmes in Turkey. Within this context, this research focused on two UNDP programmes including &ldquo / National Programme for Enhancement of Women in Development&rdquo / and &ldquo / Local Agenda 21&rdquo / . Both of the programmes have had progressive impacts over the enhancement of women&rsquo / s rights in Turkey in different stages. They are critical tools on facilitating the contributions and effectiveness of the UNDP in engendering the political agenda in Turkey. It is believed that analyzing the impacts of the UNDP&rsquo / s women&rsquo / s rights related programs has crucial importance for identifying the gaps and recommending solutions to bridge the gaps in Turkey.

This study has discussed women&rsquo / s empowerment through development projects. For this aim, development thought and practices are questioned by establishing their relationship with modernization theory and (neo)liberal politics / the theories, which include women and development, are issued historically. From these theories, Women in Development (WID) Approach, Gender and Development (GAD) Approach, and Empowerment Approach are critically discussed. In the study three points are emphasized. Firstly, the theoretical approaches have developed by articulating to each other. Secondly, the approaches have lost their transformative and political characteristics in the usage of mainstream development theoricians and institutions. It is pointed that the inclusion of women into development by the mainstream is instrumentalized for the other development goals. Thirdly, although the language of GAD and Empowerment Approaches are adopted by the mainstream, at the discursive and practical level, the dominancy of WID continues. The development projects implemented in Turkey, in the period between 1960 and 1980 and post 1980 that are significant periods of the economic and political history of Turkey, are evaluated from gender perspective and their parallel characteristics to the discourse and practices in the world are indicated. It is seen that whereas the GAD and Empowerment Approach exist in the language of the development projects implemented in Turkey, they do not reflect to the practices. Within the light of these discussions, to be able to comprehend whether the development projects provide contribution to women&rsquo / s empowerment or not, two development projects that are implemented in Turkey are analyzed. The projects are assessed from the Empowerment Approach, as a current feminist approach in the development field, within the framework of power relations.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze women&rsquo / s shelters in the context of the Feminist Standpoint Theory by focusing on a case in Turkey. The majority of the previous studies has not regarded the women&rsquo / s entire subjective experiences of domestic violence and shelter stay. Rather they present a reductionist picture. In this study, women&rsquo / s experiences of violence and shelter stay are analyzed and discussed in relation to / their specificities, the shelter structure, and the system shelters are connected in Turkey, from the perspective of Feminist Standpoint Theory. The issue of to what extent empowerment is attainable within the existing structures of institutions is questioned through qualitative method. Participatory observation is the main data gathering method in this study / semi-structured in-depth interviews are also used as additional data gathering source. Interviews and interpersonal relationships with 78 women are analyzed. The interviews aim at providing individual narratives of these women concerning the experience of violence and the process afterwards. In addition, interpersonal communications with the shelter staff are also added to the analysis. It was understood that the subjective experiences of the women are not wholly understandable under a fixed womanhood categorization of gender / they are mostly underestimated in the existing system of structure / and that the constraints specific to each woman&rsquo / s case combined with the rigid structural practices in the aftermath of violence entrap many women in situations difficult to escape, and the &lsquo / mediating role&rsquo / of the structures and individuals are disempowering for the women.

This thesis investigates two social movements in Turkey, the women&rsquo / s and LGBTT movements comparatively and in the light of available NSM theories. While brief histories of both movements are presented and all active LGBTT associations and groups in Turkey are introduced in the thesis, the main focus of the study is the LGBTT movement. Based on in depth interviews with 17 LGBTT activists, the evolution of this movement is traced and its current profile as well as its relationship to different branches of the women&rsquo / s movement are analysed in detail. The activities of the two movements during the legislative reforms in the 2000s are also examined. While findings of the thesis point to differences between the LGBTT and women&rsquo / s movements in Turkey, the interface of both movements with the state constitute a critical explanatory factor of their trajectories. The thesis also argues that the extent to which NSM theories can be used to explain these movements in the Turkish context is limited.

This Dissertation analyzes the conditions, problems and potential of rural women&rsquo / s empowerment through a sample of rural women&rsquo / s organizations (two women&rsquo / s cooperative, seven rural development cooperative and one village women associaton) with interpreting DAWN iniative and GAD approach with a socialist feminist perspective. In this study, it is stated that the agricultural sector policies and rural development policy were constructed in relation with the conditions of underdevelopment and thus, in relation with the agreements with IMF, WTO and IPARD Programme of EU which enforced the decreasing of agricultural sector subsidies. It is notable that these policies are formulated with an aim of increasing the influence and significance of capitalist relations in agricultural sector and rural areas without taking precautions for the survival of small sized farming households in rural areas. Despite these general influences of underdevelopment to Turkish Agricultural Sector and patriarchal gender assumptions, these women&rsquo / s organizations could be successful to some extent empowering their members with the recognized dimensions of empowerment such as / psychological, economical, social, organizational and political. All these dimensions are interrelated with each other. In this study, it was observed that while economic empowerment and psychological empowerment is the base of all other dimensions of empowerment, social empowerment and organizational empowerment are the most dynamic processes of empowerment and political empowerment is hardest dimension or outcome to achieve.