How and in what ways do women participate in public life? What are the narratives that shape women’s experience of public space? In this lecture, based on her newly published book, feminist sociologist Selda Tuncer explores women’s everyday experiences of public space as well as how women interpret their experiences in modern Turkey. By focusing on the period between 1950 and 1980, when the Turkish modernization process had reached a mature phase, she provides a comprehensive historical understanding of women’s lives and their experiences of public space. She analyses not only women’s relationship with public space, but also gendered processes of nation-building, socio-cultural transformations, and the crucial connections between gender, modernity and the urban experience in the non- Western context.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
