Kemalism, professionalism and patriarchal manifestations

Abstract

This article aims to scrutinize how patriarchy has come to surface in the occupational and personal experiences of the first generation of professional women in Turkey. The clues that I have found to map these appearances contribute to definitions of partiarchy by means of life-narratives. Notions such as "the spirit of the Republic," and Kemalism can be understood in the context of how professional women that have started their careers in the 1930s and 1940s strongly believe in and shape their lives upon. The strong relation between professionalism and Kemalism in Turkey and the way that this reflects onto professional women have induced me to rethink what defines patriarchy, as we all should think of contextual frameworks with a variety of experiences in mind.