TY - JOUR

T1 - What excludes women from landownership in Turkey?

T2 - Implications for feminist strategies

AU - Kocabicak, Ece

PY - 2018/7

Y1 - 2018/7

N2 - This article investigates the reasons for women's exclusion from landownership in Turkey. Landownership is a crucial element in enabling greater gender equality in developing countries. I argue that the Turkish civil code (1926–2001) discriminated against women in inheriting small-scale agrarian land, and the lack of alignment between separate feminist agendas weakened their capacity to challenge the gender-discriminatory legal framework. Historical analysis of the Ottoman and the Republican periods identifies the diverse implications for women's property rights of transition from the Islamic-premodern to the modern legal framework. The selected period reveals that rural and urban women were divided by changing forms of patriarchal domination, gendered landownership and paid employment. This division of women, alongside attacks and manipulation by the state, prevented the first-wave feminist movement from acting collectively. Consequently, the civil code granted education, employment, and inheritance rights to urban women but discriminated against rural women inheriting small-scale land under cultivation.

AB - This article investigates the reasons for women's exclusion from landownership in Turkey. Landownership is a crucial element in enabling greater gender equality in developing countries. I argue that the Turkish civil code (1926–2001) discriminated against women in inheriting small-scale agrarian land, and the lack of alignment between separate feminist agendas weakened their capacity to challenge the gender-discriminatory legal framework. Historical analysis of the Ottoman and the Republican periods identifies the diverse implications for women's property rights of transition from the Islamic-premodern to the modern legal framework. The selected period reveals that rural and urban women were divided by changing forms of patriarchal domination, gendered landownership and paid employment. This division of women, alongside attacks and manipulation by the state, prevented the first-wave feminist movement from acting collectively. Consequently, the civil code granted education, employment, and inheritance rights to urban women but discriminated against rural women inheriting small-scale land under cultivation.

KW - The Turkish civil code 1926

KW - Landownership

KW - Property

KW - Ottoman empire

KW - Feminism

KW - Islam

U2 - 10.1016/j.wsif.2018.06.005

DO - 10.1016/j.wsif.2018.06.005

M3 - Journal article

VL - 69

SP - 115

EP - 125

JO - Women's Studies International Forum

JF - Women's Studies International Forum

SN - 0277-5395

ER -