Turkish women

Women in Turkey

Latife Uşşaki (Atatürk's wife) in 1923
Gender Inequality Index
Value	0.366 (2012)
Rank	68th
Maternal mortality (per 100,000)	20 (2010)
Women in parliament	14.2% (2012)
Females over 25 with secondary education	26.7% (2010)
Women in labour force	30.5% (employment rate OECD definition, 2015)
Global Gender Gap Index
Value	0.6081 (2013)
Rank	120th out of 144

The role of women in contemporary Turkey is defined by an ongoing gender equality struggle, contributing elements of which include predicate conditions for EU membership candidacy, prevalent political tides that favour restrictive patriarchal models, and woman's rights activism. Women in Turkey continue to be the victims of rape and honor killings; furthermore research by scholars and government agencies indicate widespread domestic violence in Turkish population.

Women in Turkey also face significant disparities in employment, and, in some regions, education. The participation of Turkish women in the labor force is less than half of that of the European Union average and while several campaigns have been successfully undertaken to promote female literacy, there is still a gender gap in secondary education and an increasing gender gap in higher education. There is also widespread occurrence of childhood marriages in Turkey, the practice being especially widespread in the eastern and central parts of the country.

Discrimination based on gender is banned by the Turkish constitution. The Turkish feminist movement began in the 19th century during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. This movement was embraced after the declaration of the Republic of Turkey by the administration of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose modernizing reforms included a ban on polygamy and the provision of full political rights to Turkish women by 1934.

In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries during the Sultanate of Women, women of the Imperial Harem had extraordinary influence on politics of Ottoman Empire. Many of the Sultans during this time were minors and it was their mothers, like Kösem Sultan, or sometimes daughters of the sultan as Mihrimah Sultan, leaders of the Harem, who effectively ruled the Empire. Most of these women were of slave origin. The period started in 1520 during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent until 1656, the reign of Mehmed IV.