Rural Women’s Cooperatives From Intersectionality Perspective: The Case of Izmir

Date

2023-12

Author

Keskin, Pelin

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The aim of this study is to analyze the women’s cooperatives within Intersectional Feminism to understand the structures of gender, social class and age with emphasis on how these factors influence women’s empowerment and participation. Empowerment is a multidimensional concept that requires a contextual analysis on dynamics of women’s cooperatives. Women’s cooperatives began to pertain in literature in the recent years. However, a perspective on rural women’s cooperatives and their experiences of empowerment with emphasis on intersecting power structures, especially with a social class sensitive approach has been largely left unexplored. Intersectional Feminist Approach appropriately correlates forms of empowerment to gender, social class and age as categories of inequality. Women’s cooperatives were selected from rural areas of Izmir, because in this context they have a unique experience of cooperatives with changing rural demography, involvement of local governments and political figures, and in some areas, reliance on agri-food production. For this research, qualitative method was utilized and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted on members and chairwomen of rural women’s cooperatives. Results indicate that the different socio-economic backgrounds influence participation in rural women’s cooperatives and as well as women’s subjective experiences of empowerment.

Subject Keywords

rural women, intersectional framework, women’s cooperatives, empowerment, Izmir

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/107721

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis