An evaluation of the women’s entrepreneurship support activities in Turkey

Download
2006
Çoban, Aslı
Efforts for promotion of women’s entrepreneurship in Turkey have growing ever-more noteworthy in Turkey, in parallel to the other countries’ experiences. These efforts are ranging from creation of shared workshops by civil society organizations, entrepreneurship trainings, shared sales places to establishment of business incubators. Correspondingly, the actors involved in these activities are getting diverse. Women’s organizations, state organizations, private enterprises, chambers and national-international development foundations are developing their own models and strategies for supporting women’s entrepreneurship. These efforts are all can be categorized within the framework of development practice and be considered as a new strategy. As a development policy strategy women-focused entrepreneurship support activities are significant when compared with other employment generation aimed development programmes in terms of the number of project and programmes implemented and the multiplicity of the objectives they are acknowledged to serve. These programme and project based efforts targeting development of women’s entrepreneurship are stated to have objectives of increasing women’s employment and developing their productivity, alleviating women’s poverty and contributing to women’s social empowerment. In this work, it is argued that according to the objective prioritized over others, it is possible to diagnose three different paradigms guiding the practice of different actors. In this vein, economic efficiency oriented, poverty alleviation oriented and empowerment oriented approaches to women’s entrepreneurship support. A similar conceptualization is also offered by Mayoux (2001b). This work explores different approaches to women’s entrepreneurship support issue in Turkey using above described categorization and discusses their assumptions and implementation-process-consequences comparatively. The analysis is substantiated upon the data of 17 semi-structured interviews held with the representatives of the organizations widely involved in the area, published and unpublished reports reached and the archival data on the practices of the primary actors in the area.

Suggestions

The work strategies and experiences of the wave of 1989 immigrants from Bulgaria settled in Ankara
Karakılıç, İlhan Zeynep; Erdemir, Aykan; Department of Sociology (2007)
This study focuses on the work strategies of 1989 immigrants who had to move from Bulgaria to Turkey and settled in Ankara. During this immigratio wave, nearly 150,000 people immigrated to Turkey and settled permanently. In this study, the operational definition of the immigrant work strategy is the activities and the attitudes that the immigrants take to find and maintain thier first jobs, immediately after immigration. To learn about the work strategies of the immigrants, I conducted a field research whic...
Working street children in Turkey and Romania: a comparative historical analysis in the context of new poverty
Bilgin, Hasret Dikici; Hoşgör, Hatice Ayşe; Department of Sociology (2006)
This study aims to explore the dynamics behind the emergence and expansion of working street children since 1990s in Turkey and Romania, in the context of New Poverty. Poverty is not a new concept, it is a dynamic process, accommodating to new circumstances, its scope shrinking from time to time, but surviving ages. Children, on the other hand, are among the groups that are first and foremost affected from the course of poverty. Nevertheless, working street children is a new notion different from traditiona...
The International from the perspectives of Gezi Protestors
Göçer Akder, Derya; Altunışık, Meliha (2018-03-01)
Gezi Protests that started in Istanbul and spilled over to other cities in the Spring of 2013 has been regarded as an important episode of Turkish politics in the 21st century. Although it happened in congruous with protests movements in different localities in the world as well as significant transformations in Turkey's foreign policy, the question of the influence of the international in these protests has been largely unexplored. This paper presents the empirical findings of a fieldwork on Gezi Protests,...
A sociological analysis on recent decentralization practices in global and Turkish context
Akbaş, Meral; Akşit, Bahattin; Department of Sociology (2007)
The debates over the structure of the Turkish government in the context of Public Administration Reform that point to restructuration of state and/or to re-organization of social relations between state, market and ‘civil society’ have gained momentum especially since the arrival of draft law about Main Principles of Public Administration and Restructuring of Public Administration to the Turkish Parliament. This thesis attempts to analyze the debate on recent public administration reform in Turkey in the co...
An emergent form of reactive nationalism in Turkey : Türksolu
Erşahin, Direnç; Tokluoğlu, Ayşe Ceylan; Department of Sociology (2010)
The aim of this study is to position TürkSolu (TurkishLeft), a weekly newspaper, and its accompanying organizations in Turkey’s contemporary socio-political environment. TürkSolu, which defines itself as secular/leftist nationalist, will be investigated as a form of reactive nationalism that becomes viable in 2000s. By this means, it will be argued that TürkSolu’s secular/leftist nationalism is a form of extensively ‘exclusive’ – ethnicist – interpretation of nationalism.
Citation Formats
A. Çoban, “An evaluation of the women’s entrepreneurship support activities in Turkey,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2006.