Women’s groups demand more empowerment in constitution
Tuesday, 25th September , 2007 , 23:44 | Qadin main
Hülya Gülbahar, president of the Association for Educating and Supporting Women Candidates (KA-DER), a nonprofit organization which works to increase the number of women in the Turkish Parliament, said the now present principle of equality between men and women has been removed from the draft. In addition, an affirmative action policy for women is not present, she said.
“Instead women are reduced to the status of needing to be protected
As some Turkish women’s organizations express fears that the new draft constitution may set back women’s rights, Serap Yazıcı, the only female member of the commission of specialists set up for drafting a civilian constitution, said such fears are due to misinterpretation of the text.
Hülya Gülbahar, president of the Association for Educating and Supporting Women Candidates (KA-DER), a nonprofit organization which works to increase the number of women in the Turkish Parliament, said the now present principle of equality between men and women has been removed from the draft. In addition, an affirmative action policy for women is not present, she said.
“Instead women are reduced to the status of needing to be protected by men. We’re worried, concerned and angry. And we ask what has changed since 2004, when the equality principle was added in conformity with the EU accession negotiations. Have women and men become equal without our knowledge? Have we abandoned the goal of becoming an EU member?”
Article 10 of the current constitution, regarding “equality before law,” was amended on May 22, 2004, after a decades-long struggle by women’s groups, to read: “Men and women have equal rights. The state shall have the obligation to ensure that this equality exists in practice.” The Turkish government was praised in 2005 by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which is a United Nations body, because of the addition.
Yazıcı, a constitutional law professor at Bilgi University, said even though the draft constitution does not involve the same expression, this doesn’t mean it’s a step back for women’s rights; to the contrary, the new text enforces women’s rights.In the draft, this time Article 9 article deals with the principle of equality, and in the first paragraph it says, “All individuals are equal without any discrimination before the law, irrespective of language, race, color, sex, political opinion, philosophical belief, religion and sect or any such considerations.”
Affirmative action or not?
Yazıcı said the third paragraph actually reflects positive discrimination or affirmative action. She noted: “The first paragraph clearly articulates that all individuals are equal without discriminating by gender, and that means men and women are equal. In the third paragraph, we emphasize that the measures to be taken for protection of the elderly, children and women can not be interpreted against the rule of equality.” Yazıcı added: “How much further can we go for women’s rights? With the new constitution we aim at providing basic rights and freedoms of individuals briefly; the details can be arranged later by laws.”
Asked why the 2004 expression has not been repeated in the draft, Professor Yazıcı said: “There is no need to add it because it’s already there. Women should not be worried because they are given full rights plus affirmative action by the draft. For example, if a political party decides that at least one-third of their candidates will be women, then that action would not be against the Constitution because of the third paragraph of Article 9 that I’ve already mentioned. Another example is that women can continue to have the right to retire earlier than men as it is stated in the laws and that’s not against the constitution because of the aforementioned third paragraph.”
Another women’s group, the Women’s Rights Association Against Discrimination (AK-DER), which was established by students and professionals whose education and work rights have been denied because of their religious attire, also has been critical of the draft.
AK-DER Vice President and lawyer Fatma Benli called on the constitutional experts who prepared the draft to comply with CEDAW, to which Turkey has been a signatory since 1986. “If the 2004 amendment was not included in the draft, it would be interpreted as a step back for women’s rights,” Benli wrote in a statement headed “AK-DER’s suggestions regarding the principle of equality in the draft constitution.”
On the other hand, AK-DER praised the commission’s draft, which ends the ban on headscarves in higher education, but has been critical of outside efforts trying to limit the freedom of choice with attire at universities. “The new constitution should end the ban on headscarves which has denied hundreds of thousands of women their right to education for years,” its statement said.
Many Turkish women, who have the means, choose to study abroad because of the headscarf ban at universities, but the ones who do not have financial resources to support an education out of the country either drop out as a protest or wear wigs to bypass the rule.
No equality in practice
Habibe Yılmaz, a lawyer who coordinates an Internet forum called the Legal Support Center for Women (KAHDEM), also criticized the removal of the 2004 amendment, saying: “Children can be protected because they are defenseless and the disabled can be protected to make them equal with others and elevate their status; however, women and men are already ‘equal,’ but women have been discriminated against in practice. Therefore we need affirmative action to close the gap.”
She added: “It’s not a favor — affirmative action is necessary. Traditionally, women start from a disadvantageous position. Affirmative action policies for women would also have positive effects on children because empowering women would mean empowering children. Children suffer because of what women have to endure due to their financial dependency on men.”
The female labor participation rate in Turkey is quite low. The World Economic Forum’s report on the gender-gap this year cited Turkey as ranking 108th among 118 countries. Turkey also occupies a place near the bottom of lists regarding female labor force participation. The rate in Turkey is the lowest among all the countries of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development); the female labor force participation rate is 26 percent. That is to say, only 26 out of 100 women have the chance to participate in the labor force.
“Even that figure is misleading because the statistics include women who live in rural parts of Turkey and do unpaid work. We look at the labor force participation rate of women living in urban parts of Turkey. That rate is only about 17 percent,” said İpek İlkkaracan, assistant professor of economics at İstanbul Technical University’s Faculty of Management.
She added that the rate of participation in the labor force does not necessarily signify employment. “Out of these 17 or 18 women out of 100, only some are employed. The unemployment rate among women is higher than among men. And the issue keeps recurring in Turkey’s march toward a possible membership to the European Union.”
The Lisbon criteria suggest plans to increase the employment rate of women up to 60 percent among EU countries by 2010 or among countries seeking EU membership.
More women in parliament
Female representation in the newly elected 550-seat Parliament is at its highest level in the history of the Turkish republic with 50 female deputies, but Turkey still has one of the lowest levels of female representation in the world.
The former Parliament had only 24 female deputies, 4.4 percent of the total. The highest level of female representation in the parliament until now was 4.6 percent in 1935.
Although women are well represented in the upper echelons of academia and law, rural women still suffer. In Turkey most women’s lives continue to be shaped by several customary and religious practices that contradict existing laws, such as early and forced marriages, honor crimes and polygamous marriages. Considering that the rate of female illiteracy is around 20 percent and only 72 percent of girls enroll in secondary school, women’s representation becomes even more important.
“There is a percentage called ‘critical equality’ by the global women’s movement. That percentage is 33, and it provides a quantitatively equal representation of women in politics. When that percentage is achieved, some positive changes can begin. If that percentage is not achieved, women cannot make any changes in Parliament collectively,” Gülbahar said.
This year KA-DER held a campaign in which women asked if they had to be males to enter the Parliament. They painted moustaches on their faces for the campaign advertisements.
On the issue of women wearing headscarves and their rights to be elected, Gülbahar said: “If the headscarf symbolizes religion, how about some men who wear a certain style of moustache or a style of shaving that has a religious meaning? I can say that this is a type of discrimination against women, preventing their right to be elected.”
Out of 81 countries which have quotas to increase women’s presence in politics, 16 included the policy quotas in their constitutions and 27 in their election laws, Gülbahar said, as seen in the constitutions of Germany, Austria, France, Finland, Sweden and Portugal.
The ruling party increased women’s share of positions on its candidate lists before the July 22 elections to 11 percent, from 6 percent in 2002. The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) had about 10 percent women compared with 8 percent in the previous elections and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) had 6 percent, up from 4 percent in 2002.
Zeynep Dağı, one of the 30 female deputies from the AK Party, says women are active in politics, but this is not reflected in representation. “The AK Party is pioneering the active representation of women. I know the power of women and their efforts to exist in my party but 10 percent representation is not good enough,” she said. Known to stress individual qualities, she was asked if she would support quotas and she responded that she would because women’s efforts should be better represented in real life.
Open to proposals
Ferai Tınç, a columnist in Turkish daily Hürriyet, drew attention in her article last Monday to the fact that the equality of women has been handled in the same paragraph with the elderly, handicapped and children, and she wrote that it’s a matter of concern because women are considered among the groups in need of protection.
However, Yazıcı said this is a misreading of the text, saying, “It might carry the best of intentions but this type of interpretation degrades the elderly, handicapped and children while trying to elevate women.”
In general, Tınç said that not only women’s groups, but other civil society organizations have not been actively involved in submitting proposals and suggestions for the draft constitution: “Everybody is thinking that they will wait for what the AK Party is going to present and then they will provide opposition.”
Yazıcı said, “The draft will be made public soon. If women’s groups are still not satisfied, and if they foment public opinion, an addition can be made regarding the equality of men and women.”
The constitutional draft has been prepared by a six-member scientific board headed by internationally renowned constitutional expert Professor Ergun Özbudun, in an effort to make a democratic and civilian constitution after the 1982 constitution, which came into effect following the 1980 military coup.
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