Editors: Coşku Çelik, Deniz Parlak, Ecehan Balta, Melda Yaman, Yasemin Özgün.
Women’s Labour at the Intersection of Capitalism and Patriarchy
Gülnur Acar Savran – Melda Yaman
Observations On Women’s Paid and Unpaid Labour in Turkey From Labour Force Surveys: Effects of 2008
Crisis
Senem Oğuz
This study examines various features of women’s paid and unpaid labour in Turkey by using Household Labour Force Surveys for the years of 2004-2013 in line with the comparable data. The aim of the study is to contribute to the literature on women’s paid and unpaid labour within the context of patriarchal capitalist system, by using data from labour force surveys. Although the formal labour statistics do not provide
detailed information on women’s unpaid care and domestic labour, micro data obtained from survey questionnaires could allow an overall picture of the relationship between women’s unpaid care and domestic labour and paid labour. This study mainly focuses on the effects of the 2008 crisis on women’s paid and unpaid labour and transition in labour orce status. Accordingly, it examines labour force status of women considered as out of the labour force, unemployed and employed as unpaid family worker or paid worker by the labour statistics and presents observations on their working conditions, the reasons for not seeking a job and effects of the crisis on those aspects.
Keywords: Women’s paid and unpaid labour, women’s working conditions, crisis, labour surveys, patriarchal capitalism.
Intersectionality and Historical Materialism: Problem of the Unity of Different Subordination Forms
Sinem Uz- Cihan Özpınar
This article critically engages from a historical-materialist perspective with the notion of intersectionality that is frequently employed both in gender studies and in women’s and LGBTI+ movements. First, it examines the popular uses of intersectionality, particularly in the US case, within the scope of both state policies and progressive/left political discourses. It then goes on to explore the historical development of the concept in response to the need of thinking different forms of subjection in their unity, by taking into account the
experiences of Black women’s movement in the US on the basis of gender–race–class trilogy. It then questions the theoretical limitations of the concept, and finally takes into consideration the contributions of the contemporary social-reproduction feminism, which aims to go beyond these limitations by emphasizing the totality of capitalism, and discusses social-feminist strategy built upon the contributions of the latter.
Keywords: Intersectionality, social reproduction, gender, race, class.
The Labour that Constitutes the Common: Cracks in the Neoliberal –Patriarchal Labour –Value Relations
Demet Bolat
This article is based on the field study that I carried out in the common places established in İstanbul, İzmir, Ankara Batman and Fethiye. In this paper, I focus on the ways in which women participate in and experience collective labour processes from imagining to sustaining the commoning experimentations of places in Turkey. Thus, I aim to reveal the forms and the potentials of this labour experience in creating cracks in the labour-value matrix organized around the patriarchal-neoliberal principles. Accordingly, the article discusses firstly how women are situated as gendered bodies and then the ways women’s human capital is devalorized in the neoliberal work circle. In the following chapter, I offer the concept of the commoning value to explain the value arising from the autonomous labour in these common places. Then, I try to clarify the concept of commoning value by discussing the ways of self-valorization, empowerment and counter- subjectivities of women that emerge throughout the commoning practices.
Keywords: neoliberal- patriarchal labour regime, common places, self-valorization, commoning value.
From Workshop to Home: The Dilemma of the Subcontracting Women Workers Between Empowerment and Exploitation
Cansu Tekin
As a form of employment, flexible work increased its share in Turkish labor market. In these forms of work, which are not fully covered by legal regulations, mainly women are employed. This study examines the labor experience of women workers working in the textile branch of the manufacturing industry in terms of exploitation and empowerment. The experiences of women who work home-based and in the factory were examined through in-depth interviews and participatory observation. The study contends that private and public patriarchy weakened over time due to economic crises, but no empowerment was realized since they lacked the capacity to organize.
Keywords: Home-based work, public and private patriarchy, empowerment, exploitation.
Women’s Class Experiences under the Siege of Capitalist Patriarchy: The Gendered Nature of
Production Processes and Everyday Life in İzmir’s Garment Sector
Ayşe Arslan
Class and gender, which cannot be separated from one another, mutually shape each other. In other words, there is a reciprocal, co-constitutive relationship between production processes/working class experiences and patriarchal processes/norms. Based on an ethnographic extended case study carried out over fourteen months,
this article analyses the interplays between class and gender from a feminist historical materialist perspective in the case of İzmir’s garment sector. It mainly illustrates that patriarchal norms in Turkey are strongly diffused throughout the production processes, working conditions, socio-cultural atmosphere and everyday life on the shop floor, and intra-class and women-to-women relationships in the garment sector.
Keywords: Capitalist patriarchy, working class, garment sector, everyday life, women’s class experiences.
Science, Labour, and Politics in a Feminist Lab
Duygu Kaşdoğan
Laboratories are one of the modern spaces of scientific knowledge production processes as well as spaces where capitalist, patriarchal and colonial relations get reproduced. This article studies feminist laboratories that challenge and remain marginal in today’s dominant scientific world, and suggests that science can be done as a feminist practice and feminist politics can be produced within and through the field of science. The first section
of this article discusses how the idea and design of feminist laboratories have emerged on the basis of the concrete experiences of women scientists and the feminist critiques of science through tracing the on-going discussion in the feminist science and technology studies literature since the 1960s. The second section focuses on a feminist marine science laboratory founded in Canada –Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), and explores how the relation between science and politics is constituted with reference to feminist values in this laboratory as well as the actualization of these values through several practices. While re-thinking about scientific labour together with feminist laboratories such as CLEAR in these times of the intensified capitalization of science, this article underlines the importance of constant questioning of how, by whom, and for what science is done, and shows the need for feminist politics towards redesigning laboratories
to actualize the advocacy of the science as a collective practice for society.
Keywords: Feminist laboratories, feminist politics, scientific labour, civic science.
Migrant Care Workers Clapped in Patriarchy and Religion
Gaye Yılmaz
It can easily be diagnosed even by bare eye that secondary position of women at home keep unchanged in their labour processes and working life as well. In spite of this fact, justification of why women themselves have not taken the most important step to save them from this secondary position, in other words, the reason why women stay away from political and trade union organization is explained mostly by their counterparts, the
“male dominant” existence. Although this explanation is correct, it is insufficient to answer the question of what reasons/means women normalize this hegemony, and this study focuses on this question. In this context, in this article, I give examples from my in-depth interviews with 120 cleaning and care workers from 28 different national affiliations and 10 different religions/sects living in London, Berlin and Istanbul I conducted between 2012-2014. The study aims to understand how women perceive and internalize their religions rather than questioning what religions actually are. The study analyzes perceptions of women in a relational manner by placing it in a pentagon composed by family, migration, care labor, religion and women. The findings of the study suggest that political parties, workers’ organizations and feminist movements should also include the relationship between women and religion in their educational studies beside patriarchy.
Keywords: Women, migration, religion, care work, organizing.
