Master Thesis| MaHS 2015-2016
Author: Dilruba Ferdous Shuvra
1. Introduction 2. Methodology Preconceptual framework
Empirical Findings 3. Women’s emancipation and empowerment 4. Conclusion & Recommendations
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Women not only vigorously participate in the socio-economic dynamics but also work as social connectors (Elabor-Idemudia 2002). Women all over the world face more social, cultural, political and personal restrictions and constraints accessing productive resources though they are involved in a significant way in all sorts of socio-economic activities.
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The case of Aglasun has been taken as a case study to investigated women’s position in their personal development and their participation in socio-economic activities in community development dynamics.
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In Aglasun, women are active participants in all kinds of socio-economic activities playing a dynamic yet silent role.
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To encourage and ensure women’s participation in socio-economic development process it is important to
understand not only their abilities, strengths and limitations and overall potentials, but also their socio-cultural position from different perspectives and geographical location as well.
What is the role of women, from three strategic perspectivesindividual, family and community?
in Aglasun, in real life settings, what is and can be the role of women in emancipation and socio-economic development?
What are the potentials, constraints and restrictions along the path of their emancipation and socio-economic participation?
loss of social security
depopulation lack of job opportunities loss of productivity agriculture > traditional practices
Out-migration disengagements from traditional practices
2047 women 2014 men
|Total 4061
(http://www.aglasun.gov.tr n.d.)
Year
Population
5252 4738 4414 3847
2015
4030
2014
4,113
2013
3981
4118
2012
2011
4445
4552
4251
4442
4,288
4244
4,061
2010
3,730
2009
2008
2007
2000
1990
1985
1980
1975
1970
1965
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C4%9Flasun
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tie up the loose bonds of declining rural
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Human capital
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Social capital
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alternative diverse community economy
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Cultural capital
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slow down or even, overturn the factors of
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Economic agencies
communities
disintegration and outmigration •
capacity to redefine and rebuild community identities
METHODOLOGY Empirical findings
Preconceptual framework
Social Innovation
Women’s emancipation and empowerment and women in local development
Secondary Source
Primary Source
Strategic Spatial Planning
Planning and Development (P & D) Research archive • Documents from state institutions, • Different articles on the relevant objectives • Interviews taken in Summer Campaign 2015 • Presentations , different maps on spatial territory and mental maps
Beta CampaignAction Research Fieldwork • Field survey • Meetings and workshops • Interviews • Group Discussions • Presentation sessions
books, articles published in journals, reports, dissertations, thesis, web news and webreports, blogs
BETA CAMPAIGN Action research fieldwork
1.
Field survey_
Empirical study (Notes, mapping, sketches, photographs, infographs, audio & video recordings)
2.
Workshops_
2 focus group’s workshops 2 Workshop with women 1 Workshop with youth
3.
Meetings_
2 Breakfast meeting with women 1 Lunch meeting with women
4. 5.
Interviews Presentations & Group discussions
Field survey in the neighbourhoods (Source: author)
Focus group workshop (Source: Annette Kuhk)
Workshop with the women from the neighbourhoods (source: author).
Breakfast meeting with the women from the neighbourhoods. (Source: Author)
Launch meeting organized by women of the neighbourhoods (Source: Annette Kuhk)
Presentation of a young woman in youth workshop (source: Emerald Upoma Baidya)
Interview of an old farmer names Ismail (source: author)
Author's' presentation in final Presentation session (source: Annette Kuhk)
• “Women are critical agents for enhancing agricultural, cultural and rural development and food security in Turkey” (Minard and Brumfield 2011) .
• Their participation are seen as unpaid labour in the household work, and voluntary helping hands for their husbands in economic production. • Even though of all sorts of socio-economic activities, they are considered as marginalized and excluded from benefits and recognitions. • Empowerment has the capacity to change the social relations and mechanisms that keep them in a dependent and weak in their position, making them oppressed minority without a voice which again not possible without the process of emancipation which is more about self-realization, personal capacity building. • The position of women from different perspectives, their structures of daily lives and the way they spend their time,
have an impact on their ability to participate in development programmes ( research question). • The actual needs of women must be addressed (which is one of the core concerns of SI) within their sphere of activities to ensure and facilitate their participation, which can bring social change enhancing their quality of life
(Elabor-Idemudia 2002).
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The process of “Social Innovation is very much about social inclusion and it is also about countering or overcoming conservative forces that are eager to strengthen or preserve social exclusion situations” (Moulaert, Martinelli, et al. 2005).
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Three dimensions of Social Innovation are : 1) Satisfaction of human needs, 2) Changes in social relations and
3) Increasing the socio-political capability and access to resources. •
Community Economies strategies to include marginalized group by developing social economies, reconceptualizes the entire economy as a diverse social arena and creates an alternative economic language focusing on the
presence of hidden assets and capacities (Gibson-Graham and Roelvink, Social Innovation for Community Economies 2009). •
Kunnen et al. develops four strategies/ activities for ASBCD: 1)mapping the assets, 2)relationship building, 3)motivation and capacity building, and 4)mobilization of resources.
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ASBCD considers ‘people’ as one of the key assets where women play a vital role.
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Louis Albrechts defines Strategic Spatial Planning as “a process through which a vision, coherent actions and means for implementations are produced that shape and frame what a place is and may become”.
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Strategic Spatial Planning critically views the environment to determine the strength and weaknesses in the
context of opportunities and threats by focusing on limited number of strategic key issue areas. •
The process identifies and acts to gathers major actors, both public and private, allowing and encouraging a broad and diverse involvement by the actors during the planning process (Albrechts, Bridge the Gap: From Spatial Planning to Strategic Projects 2006).
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It provides an arena of deliberative opportunities where actors re-discover their position (in terms of their strength and weakness), their needs (what they want) and thus redefines and their idendities, traditions and values.
• Social and political barriers create restrictions towards their emancipation and empowerment and make them a marginalized group in the process of development. • SI is about social inclusion of marginalized group and a process to innovate new social relations addressing the unmet
need, providing access to resources and giving voice to that marginalized group in socio-political dynamics of a society. • Both SI and ASBCD challenges the conventional ‘recipes’ for addressing the problems and social allocation of marginalized groups and stresses on their political participation (social decision making capacity) and empowerment to ameliorate the condition for deprived or excluded communities/ groups ( rural women in this context). • SSP involves collaboration and participation among the identified key actors that directs to the means of actions towards implementation . • Though social sustainability is not a priority in strategic planning but Social Innovation approach has the ability to provide strong social coherence to strategic planning. • The Beta Campaign brings all the key actors including women, to share and develop knowledge together, addressing women’s unmet needs and potentials and aims to prepare a sustainable socially innovative local development plan for Aglasun .
• Most of the women are either illiterate or completed primary school only, especially who are above 30 years of age. • In Aglasun , the young generation is now continuing higher education but Unfortunately the number of young women is still very low in this journey . • Those who continue till college or universities, they seek mostly for state jobs which make them to migrate from
Aglasun. • In one way, formal education emancipating young women as an individual to see the world breaking their territorial boundaries and be mobile to apply their knowledge. On the other hand, since Aglausn is not offering better
opportunities for young women, it is increasing the rate of migration and detachment from their local identity. • These extension services for rural women in Turkey work in agricultural sectors and non-agricultural sectors. • Public education Center in Aglasun offers vocational technical and hobby-related courses but no basic course of business. These trainings in one hand help one to improve her individual capacities, skills but do not link them with market or capable of starting small business. • Agricultural extension programmes remain unreachable for women because of announcement issue.
• A woman leaves her parent’s house after marriage and moves to her husband ‘s
house at a very young age. • Socially more connected but shifting from her own personal space creates a
sense of loosing belongingness since this mobility doesn’t depend on her choice or will.
• This new relation that connects a woman with new possibilities to open windows for her emancipation by navigating new
opportunities for personal development through building new networks and Women's mobility caused by marriage (source: author's notebook)
giving a new meaning to old and new
networks.
Women’s personal development path when their potentials are explored ( source: made by author)
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Info-graph presents women’s personal development path when their potentials are explored with their social connection and knowledge gained from formal or informal education.
Info-graph 1 : Transformation of family structure-1, 1st G= 1st generation (parents), 2nd G= 2nd generation (the son and his wife), 3rd G= 3rd generation (the children), M= male, F= female (source: author's notebook)
An abandoned empty house in Bala neighbourhood (source: author)
Info-graph 2: Transformation of family structure 2,1st G= 1st generation (parents), 2nd G1= elder 2nd generation (elder sibling and his wife), 2nd G2= younger 2nd generation (younger sibling and his wife), 3rd G1= 3rd generation of elder sibling( children of elder sibling), 3rd G2= 3rd generation of younger sibling( children) (source: author's notebook)
< Ismail's new house (left white
one) beside the old abandoned house (right one) (source: author)
Below > Different use of Old house
:Livestock keeping (source: author)
Small greenhouse for family consumption (source: author)
Old house used as store (source: author)
Daily activities of a woman (source: author's notebook)
• Women share their experiences, knowledge, expertise, their views and opinions, they gossip, do things collectively-like making food,
doing craft works etc. and through these sharing their social networks become stronger. To reinforce social connections, social meeting places play a vital role.
• No public place for women where they can meet and socialize. • They make groups of 6-7 people and schedule meetings for tea-
Women baking together (source: author)
parties. Save money, invest them on gold and give it to the host.
• Also virtual social –network has immense possibilities to create networks and learn new knowledge. • This can widen the door to learning new techniques in various fields of their interests, making connection with new people and nurturing old connections, sharing ideas and experiences, inspiring and giving hand to each other and what not.
Women socializing in Friday market (source: author)
â&#x20AC;˘ Women in Aglasun are involved in different
socio-economic activities besides household works to serve the family or to add extra income to their family economy.
â&#x20AC;˘ The study found many socially innovative women who empowered themselves by their vision, motivation, determination and hard
work overcoming personal and social constraints, though they lack in business skills, appropriate training in production and
connection with market Socially innovative women in Aglasun in different socio-economic activities ( source: author's notebook)
â&#x20AC;˘ Among all the economic activities of women , agricultural activities
include crop production and livestock production as well. â&#x20AC;˘ The research finds that women are
involved more in labour intensive work instead of technical contents. â&#x20AC;˘ Zeynep Dogan, 40 years old
considers herself as a farmer. She said if there is programme for women farmers only, she would like
to sign up for that. She also thinks that many others will participate to develop their skills and learn better
farming techniques.
Women's activities in agriculture (data source: Budak, Darcan and Kantar 2005, Akpinar, et al. 2005)
Agricultural extension studies and projects for women in Turkey (source: Ozcatalbas and Handan Akcaoz 2010)
• ‘Women Farmers Project’, a pilot project that adapted Annie’s Project (a risk management educational programme for female farmers in United States) as model, to train 40-45 women farmers from Kulmuca on “best practices and basic skills necessary for them to scale and sustain profitable agricultural business” (Minard and Brumfield 2011). • The mission of the project was “to recognize and develop the technical and managerial capacities of Turkish women farmers through education, while supporting the region’s economic advancement toward sustainable agricultural development and gender equality” (Minard and Brumfield 2011).
Participants of Women Farmers Project (data source: Minard and Brubfield 2011)
• women in Aglasun have the traditional skills and
expertise on crafts, like knitting, crochet stitching, making puppets, weaving carpets and kilims etc. • Because of the lack of knowledge in business planning,
management strategies and mostly because of the missing link with the market, these skills remain as their hobbies and leisure time activities.
• A visit in Ozgan’s house gave a chance to see the handmade crafts made by Ozgan’s mother and wife. Both Ozgan’s mother and wife, make scarfs and decorate them
with beautiful crochet stitched edging. • As there is no market to sell these scarfs the give them as gifts to the guests or use for their personal use.
Figure 4: Handmade crochet laced scarfs ( source: Emerald Upoma Badiya )
• Aglasun had a glorious history of carpet weaving. All the women over the age of 30, know how to weave.
• 10-15 years back, they used to make good profit from weaving. • But at present because of the industrialization, loss of local
market and lack of access in global market for hand woven carpet, this tradition is almost dead in Aglasun. • There were many carpet weaving workshops in the
neighbourhoods.
Turkish rural women weaving carpet (source: mogul)
• Güner Demirtaş, 50 years of age, mother of three children, is
• Yuntdag Carpet Weaving Cooperative in Orselli is an
a wellknown weaver in Aglausn, lives in Bala . Güner still has
example of successful carpet weaving cooperative
kept her workshop where at present all the other workshops
that is still is helping to empower women by enabling
are shut down. Once she used to make good profit from it,
them to recognize the value of their work making
but now she is continuing it for her personal interest.
them a part of successful local economic production.
As Individuals In families
Problems Blind Personal Submission towards Patriarchy
Potentials Traditional skills on production
Dependency on parents and husbands
Social connection
Lack of education
Traditional values
Lack of enthusiasm (not absolute)
Motivation
Strong patriarchy
Traditional values
Transforming family structure and breaking family Husband and wife take decisions together as a team bonds (not absolute) Women in family mostly occupied with pile of Social connection household works
Family shows less interest on girl’s education rather marriage (not absolute)
In community
No opportunities for women
Community seems to provide support if there is opportunities. _Lack of access to education and professional training, Resources that can be better valorized with women’s _Lack of access to market involvement. _Lack of access to credit _Lack of job opportunities
No public meeting place for women Lack of service facilities
Lack of access in decision making process
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The schools can build awareness among the parents to educate their girl child with the same care and responsibility.
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Interactive counselling sessions between parents- teacher- student initiated by the schools can influence to build awareness.
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Also incorporation of extracurricular programmes besides regular programmes (could be socio-cultural, agricultural,
craft-cultural, food-cultural etc.) can play a role in capacity building from an early stage of life. •
A Business Administration Department in the Vocational School in Aglasun, that would include programmes on
accounting, financial management, marketing, human resource management, operations management, supply chain management, public relations, entrepreneurship, management information system and other courses that are necessary to run the department effectively.
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These programmes would inspire young generation from out-migration after graduation because of lack of job opportunities, to initiate new business ventures involving local people, local recourses and networks here in Aglasun, to create new markets connecting local and global networks and can play a role to slow down or even stop
the rate of depopulation.
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Research recommends for special training programmes for the instructors on adult teaching development methods and techniques so that they can understand adult psychology and need especially for rural women,
before they get appointed in Public Education Centres. •
Also it recommends to reinforce its educational system, which can be initiated by taking several steps:
bringing/ promoting local investors,
exhibiting locally produced products (crafts, cuisines etc.) for better exposer for market/ investors,
offering space for collective action in production,
offering basic business (resource, marketing, finance, supply chain etc.) management courses for local people besides skill development courses so that women can have access to the market ( or create new market) for their produced products and skills.
The following points should be taken in to consideration regarding agricultural extension service programmes: 1.
Besides well-trained male extension workers, more well trained women extension workers are required for successful women farmers’ participation in rural areas, since the number is not adequate for current situations.
2.
Since women in present socio-cultural tradition, do not sit together with men in public gathering, a separate room respecting women’s social behaviour needs to be adopted by the regular extension programmes ensuring other facilities for women.
3.
Agricultural training programmes for women farmers need to be launched regularly and announced properly to ensure women’s participation both in the field of crop and livestock production.
4.
The programme should give importance to quality improvement, reduction of cost, farmer organizations, environment, sustainable agricultural practice and marketing besides conventional practice and yield increase.
5.
Participatory sessions should be organized by MARA to understand women farmers’ needs, requests and to encourage and ensure women’s access to decision making in agricultural activities. These participatory sessions can help women farmers to rebuild their identity in the hegemonic patriarchal agricultural field by revealing the importance of women in agricultural practice.
6.
All kinds of agricultural information needs to be available for both male and women farmers.
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To reinforce the social fabric it is important to provide social meeting places for women of the neighbourhoods.
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Research here strongly recommends for a ‘home for cultural practice and meeting place’ for women that would house all social gatherings as well as provide space for collective traditional cultural practices, as well as sports activities.
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This new home for social association can be arranged in one of the abandoned traditional houses that the research identified in the neighbourhoods . With the permission of the owner and with the support of local political actors ( muhtar, mayor, BAKA, IPARD) its possible to refurbish one abandoned house to form this social home where women would feel free, safe, comfortable and at home, and which would make social bond stronger.
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The research has identified several women’s cooperatives in rural areas of Turkey that focus on women’s capacity building, emancipation and empowerment (Yuntdag Carpet Weaving Cooperative in Orselli, Odemis Women’s Cooperative, CATOM (Multipurpose community center) in Mardin).
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Considering the context and prospect, the research strongly suggest to form a women’s cooperatives for the revival of carpet weaving tradition of Aglasun.
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Formation of successful cooperatives would require initiators having organizational management capacities for and basic knowledge on the production process, connections with markets, investors and buyers and also with experts and designers in weaving sectors.