‘I am here’: women workers’ experiences at the former Cibali Tekel Tobacco and Cigarette Factory in Istanbul

Abstract

This study presents oral history research which investigated the experiences of surviving women workers from the former Cibali Tekel Tobacco and Cigarette Factory in Istanbul, Turkey. For most of its history, the factory was home to thousands of workers, many of who were women and, at times, outnumbered men two to one. While the site is now known for the university that it houses, photographs and archival records from the early twentieth century reveal the centrality of women in the process and production of tobacco and cigarettes until the factory completely shut down in 1995. Using oral history methods, we recorded the memories of 17 women who worked in the factory. A multi-faceted analysis reveals the gendered nature of the space at the time as well as the importance of the factory as a place in the lives of these women.

Keywords:

• Women
• workplace
• space
• oral history
• Cibali Tekel Tobacco and Cigarette Factory
• Istanbul

Acknowledgements

We want to give our thanks to all of the women who went before us working at the former Cibali-Tekel factory and particularly to those who we interviewed. We thank Şule Karataş for her work on the project. We thank our three anonymous reviewers for their elaborate, thoughtful and helpful work on our text.