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ABSTRACT
This paper examines business masculinities and relationalities of empowerment in the everyday life experiences of male entrepreneurs and wives of entrepreneurs in three urban centers in Turkey: Gaziantep, Konya and İzmir. We take gendered power inequalities as structural and relational, and empowerment as a complex, multifaceted process. Based on a relational understanding of gender roles, we scrutinize men’s and women’s decision making areas in an attempt to understand normalized and internalized patriarchal values and assumptions, as well as explicit or implicit challenges against such values. We argue that gendered experiences of entrepreneurs and women married to entrepreneurs offer a complementary analysis of nuanced empowerment strategies in the background of seemingly contradictory currents such as economic globalization, transforming masculinities, rising conservatism and reinforced gender hierarchies.
Acknowledgements
We would like to extend our special thanks to Fatima Sakarya for her help in final editing of our paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Selin Akyüz is a Research Fellow at Bilkent University’s Ihsan Doğramacı International Advanced Studies Centre. She completed her doctoral studies in 2012 in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University. Akyüz conducted her post-doctoral research on gendered perceptions of migration at University of Oxford from October 2014 to July 2015 as a visiting research fellow. She also participated in ethnographic research projects on gender equity, women empowerment, localities, and post-migratory experiences. Her journal publications have appeared in Turkish Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, Journal of Conflict Transformation and Security, and, Masculinities Journal. Her major research interests center on critical studies on men and masculinities, political sociology, Turkish politics, and migration.
Feyda Sayan-Cengiz is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Manisa Celal Bayar University. She received her PhD in Political Science from Bilkent University in 2014. She was a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University from 2009 to 2010. She has previously worked in the Department of Media at Istanbul Bilgi University. She has published in edited books as well as journals, such as Women’s Studies International Forum and New Perspectives on Turkey. Her book, Beyond Headscarf Culture in Turkey’s Retail Sector was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. Her research interests include political sociology, politics of gender, Islamic consumerism, social movements and media studies.
Aslı Çırakman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Middle East Technical University. She is interested in gender studies, nationalism, populism, and political thought.
Dilek Cindoğlu is Professor of Sociology at the Hamid Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. She received her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has previously worked at Bilkent University, Mardin Artuklu University, and Abdullah Gül University. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a Senior Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Gender and Sexuality at New York University, and a Visiting Senior Scholar at the The Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University in New York. She has been a consultant on various research projects funded by national and international institutions. Her work has been published at several national and international academic journals and as book chapters. Her research interests include gender and sexuality, sociology of health, political sociology, sociology of work and migration.
Notes
1. Batliwala, “Taking the Power out of Empowerment.”
2. Kabeer, “Women, Wages and Intra-Household Power Relations.”
3. Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy.”
4. Gürbilek, The New Cultural Climate in Turkey, 1.
5. Acar and Altunok, “The ‘Politics of Intimate’.”
6. Güneş-Ayata, and Doğangün, “Gender Politics of the AKP.”
7. White, Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks.
8. Ahl, “The Scientific Reproduction,” and Hamilton, “The Discourse of Entrepreneurial Masculinities.”
9. Bruni et.al., “Doing Gender, Doing Entrepreneurship”; Ahl and Marlow, “Exploring the Dynamics of Gender”, and Giazitzoglu and Down, “Performing Entrepreneurial Masculinities.”
10. Down, Narratives of Enterprise; Smith, “Masculinity, Doxa and the Institutionalisation of Entrepreneurial Identity”; Giazitzoglu and Down, “Performing Entrepreneurial Masculinities.”
11. Connell, “Masculinities and Globalization.”
12. Demir et al., “Anatolian Tigers or Islamic Capital.”
13. Filiztekin and Tunalı, “Anatolian Tigers: Are They for Real?”
14. Demir et al., “Anatolian Tigers or Islamic Capital.”
15. Hoşgör, “Islamic Capital/Anatolian Tigers.”
16. White, Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks.
17. Kandiyoti, “Locating the Politics of Gender.”
18. Kabeer, “Resources, Agency and Achievements”; Rowlands, “Empowerment Examined”; and Batialawa, “Taking the Power out of Empowerment.”
19. Batliwala, “Taking the Power out of Empowerment.”
20. Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?”
21. Abu-Lughod, “Dialects of Women’s Empowerment.”
22. Bulbeck, “Feminist Theory in the Developing World.”
23. Scheyvens, “Subtle Strategies for Women.”
24. Ibid., 237.
25. Kabeer, “Resources, Agency and Achievements,” 448.
26. Ibid., 447–8.
27. Scheyvens, “Subtle Strategies for Women.”
28. Rowlands, “Empowerment Examined,” and Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?”
29. Scheyvens, “Subtle Strategies for Women.”
30. Molyneux, “Mobilization without Emancipation?”
31. Ibid., 233.
32. Rowlands, “Questioning Empowerment.”
33. Rowlands, “Questioning Empowerment,” and Batliwala, Empowerment of Women in South Asia.
34. Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?”
35. Rowlands, “Empowerment Examined,” 103.
36. Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?”
37. Stromquist, “The Theoretical and Practical Bases for Empowerment.”
38. Rowlands, “Empowerment Examined”; and Batialawa, “Taking the Power out of Empowerment.”
39. Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment: What Works?” 346.
40. Batliwala, “Taking the Power out of Empowerment.”
41. Rowlands, “Empowerment Examined.”
42. Kabeer, “Women, Wages and Intra-household Power Relations.”
43. Kabeer, “Resources, Agency and Achievements,” and Kabeer, “Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.”
44. Kabeer, “Resources, Agency and Achievements,” 435.
45. Kabeer, “Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.”
46. Kabeer, “Resources, Agency and Achievements,” 435.
47. Kabeer, “Women, Wages and Intra-household Power Relations.”
48. Ibid., 300.
49. Beşpınar, “Questioning Agency and Empowerment.”
50. Gündüz-Hoşgör and Smits, “Variation in Labor Market Participation,” and Cindogˇlu and Toktas̜, “Empowerment and Resistance Strategies.”
51. Bolak, “Marital Power Dynamics”, and Sirman, “Feminism in Turkey.”
52. Beşpınar, “Questioning Agency and Empowerment.”
53. Ibid., 530.
54. Bolak, “Marital Power Dynamics.”
55. Ibid., 228.
56. Beşpınar, “Questioning Agency and Empowerment.”
57. Molyneux, “Mobilization without Emancipation?”
58. Batliwala, “Taking the Power out of Empowerment.”
59. Ayata, “Bir Yerel Sanayi,” and Durakbaşa et al., “Local Notables and Businessmen.”
60. Demir et al., “Anatolian Tigers or Islamic Capital”, 166.
61. Connell, “Masculinities and Globalization.”