Gendered experiences during COVID-19 in Turkey and the meaning of home

Abstract

This work aims to uncover the changing meaning of home by focusing on gender-based experiences of staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. The findings show that the meaning of home is not straightforward and, depending on one’s gender-based experiences and diverse experiences of staying at home arise. In this work, Doreen Massey’s (1994) joint conceptualisations of spatiality and identity for understanding space and place in general and home in particular not as an absolute but as a relational place, together with Iris Marion Young’s (2005) conceptualisation of homemaking provide the theoretical context for linking the stay-at-home experiences of the participants with the meaning of home during the COVID-19 pandemic from a gender perspective. Furthermore, gender-based experiences of staying at home during the COVID-19 in Turkey are meaningful in the context of the discourses and social policy interventions of the existing government producing the social organization of space from an anti-gender and a conservative neo-liberal perspective. This work is based on online qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with 32 self-identified female participants. Interview data were interpreted using the three thematic categories of ‘home as a dwelling,’ ‘home as a burden,’ ‘home as a place for preservation. The findings support the existing research on the gender-specific organisation of care work and time usage and further contribute to the field by demonstrating that home was a gendered space sustained through mutual relations between gender practices and spatial practices before and during the pandemic.

Keywords:

• Home
• homemaking
• gender
• pandemic
• women in Turkey

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Bahçeşehir University through Grant BAP.2020-02.09.1. The author owes special thanks to the sociology students Zuhal Akay, Uğurcan Akkoca, İrem Aydost, Ceren Çiçekdiken, Kübra Nur Demir, Defne Tuzcuoğlu, and Mehtap Öncü for their collaboration in conducting and managing some of the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Pınar Melis Yelsalı Parmaksız is a professor at Bahçeşehir University in the Department of Sociology. She received her PhD in Turkish Studies from Leiden University in 2009 with a thesis titled ‘Modernization and Gender Regimes in Turkey: Life Histories of the Wives of Turkish Political Leaders’. Her main areas of interest are gender and women’s studies, Turkish modernisation, memory studies, and methodology, including feminist methodology. Among her publications are books titled Ev Kitabı [Book of Home] (Nika Yay, forthcoming), Türkiye’nin Modernleşmesinde Kadınlar [Women in Turkish Modernisation] (İmge Yay., 2017), Mothers in Public and Political Life (Demeter Press, 2017), and Neye Yarar Hatıralar? Türkiye’de Bellek ve Siyaset Çalışmaları [What Are Memories For? Studies on Memory and Politics in Turkey] (Phoenix Yay., 2013) and many articles including ‘Cultural Memory of Social Protest: Mnemonic Literature about Gezi Park Protests’ (Memory Studies, 2020), ‘Thirty Years of Gender and Women’s Studies in Turkey’ (Women’s Studies International Forum, 2019), ‘Belleğin Mekânından Mekânın Belleğine Kavramsal Bir Tartışma’ (İlef, 2019), and ‘Paternalism, Modernization and Gender Regime in Turkey’ (Aspasia, 2016).

Data availability statement

Data are available on request from the author.

Additional information

Funding

Bahçeşehir Üniversitesi; Grant BAP.2020-02.09.1.