[ppi] [ppiindia] Winning the gender gap war in Turkey

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG25Ak04.html


Jul 25, 2006 


 KEBABBLE 
Winning the gender gap war in Turkey
By Fazile Zahir 


FETHIYE, Turkey - The meeting was called for the early evening so that the men 
would not bake in the heat of the day. They gathered solemnly in the Guvecli 
village square and listened as the young father outlined his ideas to them. 
They would not be bullied, he said, they would stand firm and be united. No one 
should tell them how to bring up their families or how to run their lives. 
Other voices rose in support, dark brows nodding in encouragement as his 
arguments rang a common chord. Their way of life had sustained them for 
generations, and they had seen the benefits of their principles. 

Each of the older men at the village gathering had at least six children and 
knew that when he returned home they would all be there to ensure his comforts 
and needs were met. The outsiders proposed to take away one of the most 
important parts of their honor and their households. A show of hands served as 
a vote and the decision was unanimous. None of the men in the village - 
fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers and cousins - would allow their 
daughters to go to school. They vowed to stand resolute in the face of the 
current government campaign, and 100 young girls stand condemned to a fate of 
ignorance and illiteracy as a result. 

The vote was prompted by the incursion into the village of the government's 
"Come on Girls, Let's Go to School" campaign. Guvecli is 30 kilometers from Van 
and has no school of its own. Populated by Kurds, there are 150 houses 
containing 2,000 people. This month eight teachers went to the village and 
knocked on everyone's door to talk to them about educating their daughters. 
These teachers are the foot soldiers of the government's complex and 
multi-stranded grassroots movement to increase the number of girls at school. 

Roughly a million girls of primary-school age are not going to school in 
Turkey. In some provinces (primarily in the southeast) more than 50% of girls 
between six and 14 years of age are unschooled. The "Let's Go to School" 
crusade was launched in Van in 2003 by UNICEF (the United Nations Children's 
Fund) and the Turkish Ministry of National Education. The efforts of the 
government, the media and hundreds of volunteers have made great strides in 
redressing the gender imbalance in schools, and villages like Guvecli are 
becoming less and less common. The village men's vote was condemned in the 
papers as an "agreement for ignorance" and as being behind the times. Turkey is 
making good headway against these old attitudes: 10 years ago the female 
literacy rate stood at 72% (73rd in the world), but the current level stands at 
a much more respectable 82%. 

Parents offer many reasons their daughters should not attend school, the most 
common of which is that they cannot afford it. However, the government has 
taken measures to manage this argument. It gives away free textbooks and offers 
a monthly stipend, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT). Other reasons are used 
as a fallback - that schools are of poor quality or far away, that their 
pubescent teenagers cannot wear headscarves and thus their honor is at risk, 
that co-educational schools will corrupt their daughters and render them unfit 
for marriage, and that the children are needed to work (seemingly only the 
female children). 

Many of these are excuses used to disguise the fact that parents see no value 
in girls being educated. In fact, it is considered a threat, for an educated 
girl may not be the subservient, quiescent wife that is valued in these rural 
Kurdish areas. A girl with education is a woman with options and choices, and 
that threatens centuries-old male-dominated societies. 

The campaigners remain undaunted, and the highest levels of support from the 
prime minister and his wife to national television and newspaper promotions 
have ensured that progress is being made. Twenty thousand girls in the Van area 
alone have been enrolled, and 40,000 extra girls were entered for schooling in 
the policy's first year of implementation. In 2004-05 that figure rose to 
120,000. 

In August 2004, UNICEF trained and deployed 13,000 teachers, nurses, midwives, 
social workers and other volunteers. They were all armed with "blue books" full 
of at-the-ready counter-arguments to the traditional justifications for 
non-enrollment of girls. Volunteers also discuss the availability of the CCT 
monthly stipend and the benefits of educating girls, including better family 
nutrition, lower infant-mortality rates, higher potential family income, and 
more significant contribution to the household and community at large. The most 
direct approach, employed in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa and 
elsewhere, is that eight years of schooling is compulsory; otherwise, "you are 
breaking the law". 

Sukran Celik, a teacher from Van and one member of the vast network of 
volunteers who go door to door, explained how she tries to persuade parents to 
agree: "I say to them, isn't it hard for you to read instructions when you go 
places? If your daughter is educated, she can earn money and bring in a salary 
and care for you." 

If Sukran can't get through to the parents, she can rely on the backup of the 
local imams who promote girls' education during Friday prayers. Ibrahim Yasin, 
a village imam, said: "It is a girl's right to go to school; a girl must be 
educated. Islam tells us this." 

Although there are many obstacles that hamper the progress of the campaign, a 
new attitude is forming in Turkey's southeast. There is now a hunger for change 
that promises to pay dividends for decades to come. Zozan Ozgokce, the head of 
the Van Women's Association (and also a foot soldier), said there is a growing 
consensus that education is an imperative for every child: "When we ask women 
how they want their children to live, they almost never say, 'like me'. And 
when we ask the women what they want to be, they say, 'educated'." 

UNICEF country representative Edmund McLoughney said: "Sending a girl to school 
is a way to transform society and generate progress among the poorest, most 
marginalized families of the country." He underlined the shifts in ancient 
habits that it causes: "Just getting families into the habit of sending their 
girls off to school every morning can break the practice of generations. It may 
not change the attitudes of the present generation, but if their daughters get 
an education, they will want to send their own daughters. They won't need to be 
pushed anymore." 

It seems that Turkey is winning the gender-gap war and that its future involves 
empowered and educated women. 

Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She moved to 
live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then. 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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