Life before and after the ban: experiences of women physicians with headscarves in public health sector in Turkey

Download

12626089.pdf

Date

2021-2-17

Author

Köşger, Ayşe Sena

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

429
views

443
downloads

The headscarf issue has been a substantial controversy for veiled women at work until the abolition of the headscarf ban in public institutions in 2013. Since then, veiled women have been working freely in public institutions. The abolition of the headscarf ban was introduced as a solution to veiled women's headscarf- and work-related problems. However, the current state of veiled women at work has not been inquired. This thesis analyzes veiled women physicians’ workplace experiences in Turkey's public health sector and tries to identify lingering effects of the headscarf issue, if any. Although the state of women physicians in the medical workplace and the relationship between veiled women and work have been studied widely, none of these studies focus on the state of veiled women physicians working in public health institutions after the abolition of the headscarf ban. To assess the effects of the headscarf issue on veiled women physicians in the medical workplace, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-one veiled physicians who experienced the headscarf ban in their lives and are currently working in public health institutions in Ankara. This study found that the prior headscarf ban affected veiled women physicians' medical specialty and workplace choices. Today, the ban's repercussions continue to some extent, and the headscarf shapes veiled physicians' workplace experiences negatively and positively. While some patients are pleased to be treated by veiled physicians, some medical professors are dissatisfied with having veiled physicians in their workplace. The medical hierarchy exacerbates the headscarf-based discrimination in the medical workplace.

Subject Keywords

headscarf issue, headscarf ban, public health, sector, veiled women physicians,, gender discrimination at the professional workplace

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/89657

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Values, Equality and Differences in Liberal Democracies. Debates about Female Muslim Headscarves in Europe Saktanber, Ayşe(2009-2-28) The VEIL Project focuses on the debates, conflicts and regulations concerning head- and body coverings of Muslim women in the public sphere, particularly in public institutions such as schools, universities and the courts. As a highly visible symbol of religious difference and conflicting values the Muslim headscarf has been the subject of heated debates across Europe and subjected to legal regulations in some European countries. One of our assumptions is that in debates about the headscarf fundamental val...
Civil society and state relations in Turkey: Opposing trajectories of two Islamist women's civil society organizations Keysan, Asuman Ozgur; Özdemir, Zelal (Informa UK Limited, 2020-07-01) The Islamic women's civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey entered a new phase with the lifting of the headscarf ban, which had long been the focus of Islamic women's activism against authoritarian gender policies in the country. Based on research conducted in 2012 and 2018 on two Islamist women's CSOs that have been active here during the last two decades, AKDER (Women's Rights Organization against Discrimination) and BKP (Capital City Women's Platform Association), this paper aims to understand thes...
Professional women in Turkey: a qualitative study Gencher, Siv Dale; Acar, Feride; Department of Gender and Women's Studies (2002) The Turkish state has developed few policies and legal structures aimed to support female work participation compared to several "western countries". Despite the lack of formal support structures encouraging female work participation, Turkish professional women show a high level of work attachment and succeed professionally in fields that are male dominated in "western" countries. This study explores the choices, priorities and experiences of a group of (eighteen) professional women in Turkey, and how these...
Challenging religious and Secularist Patriarchy Islamist Women s New Activism in Turkey Aslan Akman, Canan (2011-01-01) Since the late 1990s, following the state’s process of de-politicization and exclusion, educated Islamist women in the urban centers of Turkey have been active in raising Muslim women’s identity consciousness and generating solidarity with those affected by the headscarf ban. In the women’s organizations analyzed in this article, Islamist women are carving out a niche to challenge both secularist and Islamist patriarchal practices and discourse. This article contends that organized Islamist women have becom...
From gender equality to gender justice : a critical discourse analysis in terms of gender equality in Turkey Baba, Elif; Ecevit, Fatma Yıldız; Department of Gender and Women's Studies (2019) The study focuses on the shift in the axis of women's policies from gender equality to gender justice within the last years in Turkey. Gender justice is the reflection of the miscellaneous transformation policy of the neoconservative discourse on women's issues. The study demonstrates that gender justice is designed by the neoconservative discourse to eliminate the role of gender equality on women's policies, by its distortion. Lacking a theoretical background or an effective argument, gender justice reprod...

Citation Formats

A. S. Köşger, “Life before and after the ban: experiences of women physicians with headscarves in public health sector in Turkey,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2021.