In her article, Gülseren Onanç, the founding chair of SES Equality and Solidarity Association reviews the Social Democracy Foundation’s report on Women’s Problems in Economic and Social Life and lists some of the demands that women request from the political opposition.
Gülseren Onanç
60% of women in Turkey feel unhappy. This rate is even higher for women who voted for opposition parties. 86.8 percent of women who voted for HDP and 74.1% of women who voted for CHP, 72.2% of those who voted for the IYI Party state that they are unhappy as a woman living in Turkey. 40% of women who say they voted for the AK Party are unhappy.
These results are from the Research Report on Women’s Problems in Economic and Social Life, prepared by the Social Democracy Foundation (SODEV) with the contributions of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Association in Turkey.
In an environment where we are divided, marginalized, judged and punished over the political party we vote for, when the identity of being a woman is added, a picture of deep unhappiness emerges.
Opposition supporters are more hopeless
Another important finding in the study is that 65.8 percent of the women participating in the study expressed that they were hopeless about the future. Those who voted for opposition parties seem even more hopeless. 92.1 percent of women who voted for HDP, 82.2 percent of women who voted for CHP, and 44 percent of women who voted for the AK Party state that they are hopeless for the future. Being hopeless about the future has nothing to do with whether you have a job or not. Either way, women are hopeless for the future. Again, the most hopeless women are young women aged 18-24. 72.5 percent of young women have dark dreams for the future.
We are not free
According to the results regarding freedoms in the report, 40.1 percent of women who voted for the AKP felt free, while 15.2 percent of those who voted for the IYI Party and 6.1 percent of women who voted for the CHP. only 1.3 percent of those who voted for HDP feel free.
According to the report, the most important problems of women living in Turkey are violence, harassment and the burden of unpaid labor and care in the household. 76.8 percent of the women participating in the interviews think that violence and 75.1 percent think that harassment is the most important problem of women. The experiences of the participating women also show that the leading problems of women in Turkey are unpaid household labor and care work and employment problems.
We have high expectations from the new government.
There are 37 days until the 14 May Elections. Women clearly reveal their problems and demands. Women are unhappy and hopeless for the future. The AKP and the People’s Alliance showed that they are determined to further regress women’s rights, which have been regressed since 2010, with the reactionary, shariaist alliance they formed.
This week, as SES Equality and Solidarity Association, we came together with representatives of women’s organizations, activists and members of the press to express our demands regarding women’s policies towards the new President and political opposition parties. Before the election, we wanted to express the demands of women, especially the new President Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the Nation Alliance.
Academic and writer Serpil Sancar, who attended our meeting as a speaker, focused on the policies of protecting women’s rights. She emphasized that the Nation Alliance did not offer a framework that complies with universal commitments on women’s rights, and that there were no concrete promises in the texts of the memorandum regarding equal political representation of women and the strategies and policies to achieve this.
The problems of women are so many that instead of listing these problems one by one, we demanded the necessary mechanisms and processes to solve these problems.
We have gathered our demands under three headings:
- Equal representation in Parliament
- Women’s non-governmental organizations’ participation in the decision and policy-making processes
- The formation of Ministry of Women and Equality
Especially the establishment of a ministry will be very important and valuable in terms of explaining the policy to be implemented by the new government. The Ministry will function as an executive body that will directly address women’s issues on the basis of equal citizenship. The main mission of the Ministry of Women and Equality, which deals with women’s issues and aims to achieve gender equality, as in many European countries; supporting the political, social, economic and cultural empowerment of women, combating violence against women, sexual abuse, and ensuring gender equality.
We are calling to the political opposition and the party leaders that make up the Nation Alliance and the presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Hear the demands of unhappy, hopeless female voters. Celebrate the second century of the Republic with a Ministry of Women and Equality.
For this purpose, we ask you to support the campaign we launched on Change.org.
Let’s bring spring to the country equally.