Localizing Modern Female Subjectivities: World Society and the Spatial Negotiation of Gender Norms in Turkey

In our article, we analyze gender norms in Turkey. We are interested in how such norms are transformed or reified in light of global/local interplays in contemporary world society. The case of Turkey is usually studied with a view to a persistent gap between national/global constitutional and legal provisions that promote gender equality, on the one hand, and a seemingly resistant everyday reality, on the other. While our research in the Turkish province of Hatay confirms that such a gap persists, we nevertheless detect meaningful transformations of gender norms in everyday practice. Our research, which focuses in women’s positioning in higher education, indicates that such transformations occur in particular through everyday spatial practices, inter alia through what we refer to as local tactics of mobility by women seeking higher education. While there is no linear and direct diffusion of gender norms from the global/national to the local, we nevertheless observe significant global/local interplays to w...