The compliant wife, the good mother and other normalizing constructions of womanhood: a critical discourse analysis of idealized female identities within Turkish educational policy

ABSTRACT

The present study analyzes discursive practices that work to construct particular female identities and re/construct gender inequalities in Turkish educational system. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was utilized to analyze 124 publicly available educational policy documents directly related to gender in education. Additionally, CDA was applied to a total of 252 Turkish newspaper clippings published over the last decade in 14 different national newspapers. Analysis of the data was used to critically examine perceptions of teachers regarding gender issues in education. A total of 13 semi-structured interviews with teachers working at public schools in Ankara province were conducted for this purpose. The analysis describes the effects of discourse produced by and through the framing of policies and educational practices that shape Turkish social identities. Specific discursive effects examined include the construction and normalization of a female identity that is inferior, submissive, and conservative.

KEYWORDS:

• Female identity
• gender inequalities in education
• policy discourse
• critical discourse analysis

Bio

Dr. Pınar Mercan Küçükakın is an instructor at the School of Foreign Languages at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University in Ankara, Turkey. She received her doctorate degree from the Middle East technical University, Department of Educational Sciences. She has 15 years of teaching experience at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Her recent work includes barriers to girls’ education, gender policy in Turkish education, gender discrimination and public school dress code policies, and the role of teacher education in increasing gender awareness of prospective teachers. She also conducted needs analysis and curriculum evaluation studies of ELT curriculum in Turkey. She was awarded a Fulbright Post-Doc Research scholarship and conducted research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2018–2019.

Dr. Cennet Engin-Demir is a professor at the Middle East technical University, Faculty of Education in Ankara, Turkey. She also conducted research on social issues and education such as gender inequalities, child labor, education of disadvantaged children, urban and rural education, education in Central Asian Turkic Republics, and alternative and democratic education. She worked as expert and consultant at various projects related to education. Recent works included girls’ education, inclusive education, democratic citizenship and human rights education, domestic violence against women, effects of light work on school achievement and gender-sensitive schools. She also co-ordinated and completed various Projects on active citizenship and gender equality in education supported by EU and Turkish government successfully. She was awarded a Fulbright Senior Research scholarship and conducted research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2010–2011. Currently, she is the chair of the METU, Department of Educational Sciences.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at ECER 2017: The European Conference on Educational Research. 22-25 August 2017- Copenhagen V, Denmark. The data used in this study comes from the PhD thesis of the first author, supervised by the second author. We would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments which have contributed to the final version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Even if their arguments align with gender equity perspective, the researchers use the term “gender equality” in the paper, as it provides a better representation of Turkish educational policy discourse.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pınar Mercan Küçükakın

Pınar Mercan Küçükakın, Department of Educational Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey 

Cennet Engin-Demir

Cennet Engin-Demir, Department of Educational Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey