‘My shop, my self’: independent women shopkeepers and their empowerment struggles

ABSTRACT

This article examines the empowerment struggles of female shopkeepers in a district in Istanbul, focusing upon the creation of autonomous women’s space, the construction of entrepreneurial/occupational identity, and the concomitant strengthening of female bonds, particularly those between mothers and daughters. I argue that understanding women’s solidarity is essential for any assessment about how the hegemonic gender codes are reproduced, reconfigured, or challenged in the world of independent female small business owners. Even though the women in the study do not explicitly oppose the dominant gender discourse, their position-takings are often the key in setting the trajectory of the power struggles around the small business. Women’s empowerment in this context is a difficult, open-ended process whose outcome is dependent upon how they tackle with the ambivalent, often negative reactions of their male life partners as well as maintaining their commitment to their enterprising endeavor and to their ties with other women.

KEYWORDS:

• Small business
• gender
• women’s empowerment
• mother-daughter bonding
• women’s solidarity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gini, My Job, My Self.

2 Martin, “Gendered Work Identities”; and Bradley, “Gender and Work.”

3 Cornwall and Edwards, “Introduction”; Kabeer, “Resources”; and Kabeer, “Gender Equality.”

4 Ahl, Female Entrepreneur; Ahl, “New Directions”; Ahl and Marlow, “Exploring”; Hamilton, “Whose Story”; Hamilton, “The Discourse”; and Gherardi, “Authoring.”

5 Ahl and Marlow, “Exploring”; and Al-Dajani and Marlow, “Empowerment.”

6 Hanson, “Changing Places”; Ojediran and Anderson, “Women’s Entrepreneurship”; Alkhaled and Berglund, “‘And Now I’m Free’”; and Roos and Gaddefors, “In the Wake.”

7 Kandiyoti, “Bargaining”; Kandiyoti, “Gender, Power”; Hanson, “Changing Places”; Özkazanç-Pan, “On Agency”; Suzuki Him, “A Paradox”; Kawarazuka, Locke, and Seeley, “Women Bargaining”; and Cindoğlu, and Toktaş, “Empowerment and Resistance.”

8 Al-Dajani and Marlow, “Empowerment and Entrepreneurship”; Essers, Benschop and Doorewaard, “Female Ethnicity”; Valdez, The New Entrepreneurs; Cederberg and Villares-Varela, “Negotiating Class”; and Essers, et al., “Navigating Belonging.”

9 Ojediran and Anderson, “Women’s Entrepreneurship.”

10 Bondi and Davidson, “Situating Gender,” 16.

11 Spain, Gendered Spaces, and Massey, Space, Place, and Gender.

12 Hanson, “Changing Places,” 262.

13 Essers and Benschop, “Muslim Businesswomen”; Aygören and Nordqvist, “Gender”; and Ozasir-Kacar and Essers, “The Interplay.”

14 Addo, “Is It Entrepreneurship.”

15 Villares-Varela, “Negotiating Class”; and Cederberg and Villares-Varela, “Ethnic Entrepreneurship.”

16 For a general evaluation of various theoretical approaches to middle-class identities, see Grimson, Guizardi, and Merenson, “Introduction.”

17 Hanson and Blake, “Gender and Entrepreneurial Networks”; and Hanson, “Changing Places,” 252.

18 Emily Chamlee examines the role of female solidarity, particularly that of the mother-daughter relationship in the West African context: “The conjugal unit, while not incidental, rarely replaces gender specific groupings as the primary relationship. The mother-daughter relationship, for instance, plays a primary role throughout a woman’s life, even as the daughter marries. The strict division of labor across gender perpetuates the importance of same sex peer groups into adulthood as women work side by side with one another” (Chamlee, “Indigenous African Institutions,” 83). In this article, however, I try to explore the modified and changing forms of the already-existing patterns of female solidarity.

19 For critical approaches to motherhood and mothering see O’Brien Hallstein, O’Reilly, and Vandenbeld Giles, eds., Routledge Companion to Motherhood.

20 O’Reilly, Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood.

21 For theoretical debates about care, see Thelen, “Care as Belonging”; Gary, “From Care Ethics”; Keller and Kittay, “Feminist Ethics of Care”; Lindemann, “Feminist Ethics”; and Glenn, Forced to Care.

22 Özar, “Women Entrepreneurs”; Özbay, Kadın Emeği–Seçme Yazılar; Can, “Caring for Solidarity?”; and Bolak, “When Wives.”

23 Duben, “Generations”; Dedeoğlu and Elveren, Gender and Society; and Acar and Altunok, “Politics of Intimate.”

24 Kandiyoti, “Bargaining”; Kandiyoti, “Gender”; Can, “Caring for Solidarity?”; Suzuki Him, “A Paradox”; and Beşpınar, “Questioning Agency.”

25 Özar, “Women Entrepreneurs in Turkey.”

26 Özsan, “Shopkeepers”; and Özsan, Cinsiyet, Dükkân ve Semt.

27 Atkinson et al., Handbook of Ethnography, and Thornberg and Charmaz, “Grounded Theory.”

28 Harding, “Starting Thought”; Stanley and Wise, “Method”; and Skeggs, “Feminist Ethnography.”

29 For a recent attempt at the delineation of the middle class in Turkey, using “objective” and “subjective” parameters, see Akçaoğlu, “Political Struggles.”

30 On the difficulties dealing with the diversity of the middle class, Grimson, Guizardi, and Merenson write: “ … the self-ascriptions of the heterogeneous global middle sectors combine diverse forms of class identification. In this regard, persons can incorporate one, two, or various classes. In the words of our interviewees from the popular neighborhoods of greater Buenos Aires (Argentina), people could be ‘working-class approaching middle’, ‘sort of middle class’, and ‘middle class verging on lower’” (emphasis in the original; Grimson, Guizardi, and Merenson, “Introduction,” 2).

31 For the theoretical discussions concerning the overlap between these two forms of division (masculine/feminine and public/private) see Göle, The Forbidden Modern; Özyeğin, Gender and Sexuality; and Bora, Kadınların Sınıfı.

32 Addo, “Is It Entrepreneurship.” See also Hanson, “Changing Places.”

33 For a study examining how Israeli female chefs construct their restaurant kitchens as the extension of their dwellings and the creation of “homey feeling” there, see Gvion and Leedon, “Incorporating the Home.” See also Bird and Sokolofski, “Gendered Socio-Spatial Practices.”

34 For discussions on the emotion of “feeling at home” in spatial appropriation, see Supski, “Another Skin”; Bird and Sokolofski, “Gendered Socio-Spatial Practices”; and Duyvendak, The Politics of Home.

35 For a similar construction of gendered space in men’s shops see Bird and Skololofski, “Gendered Socio-Spatial Practices.”

36 For a general evaluation of the portrayals of mothers and daughters as both “natural allies” and “natural enemies” as well as the societal myths and power dynamics regarding this relationship see Caplan, “Daughters and Mothers.” For an insightful study on mother-daughter relationships and the shaping of the self, see Lawler, Mothering the Self.

37 For an assessment of gender and care work in the Turkish context, see Dedeoğlu, “Special Dossier.”

38 Durakbaşa, Karadağ, and Özsan, Türkiye’de Taşra Burjuvazisinin; Durakbaşa, Özsan, and Karadağ, “Women’s Narratives as Sources”; and Özsan, “Eşraf Ailelerinin Statü Mücadelelerinde.”

39 Cf. Villares-Varela, “Ethnic Entrepreneurship.”

40 For a critical evaluation of the impact of the dominant patriarchal discourse on mother-daughter relationships, see Smith Silva, “Configuring.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gül Özsan

Gül Özsan received BA in Social Anthropology at Istanbul University, and MA and PhD in Sociology at Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul. She taught at Marmara University, between 2001 and 2014. She has been working as a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Istanbul University since 2014. She has taken part in a large number of research projects (including TÜBİTAK projects), and published extensively on provincial notables (eshraf), artisans, shopkeepers, and migration.