Islamist civil society associations: |the case of the Rainbow İstanbul Women's Platform

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the self-definition of Turkish Islamist women who are organized around the Rainbow Istanbul Women's Platform which consists of more than forty Islamist women's civil associations. The thesis is based on a survey of the members, interviews, participant observation in panels of the Platform, the pamphlets of the Platform and media material. It asserts that the Islamist women of the nineties differ from the critical actors of the eighties with their discourse focused on self-definition in relation to their public and private roles, professional rights and on participation. The contemporary Islamist women express their demands to take place in the public sphere on an equal basis with other social actors. However they are not for a total equality which according to them results in a denial of the 'feminine nature' of women. Instead, they stress difference of women as mothers and propose to rearrange working hours and spaces for women. Similarly the private sphere must be reorganized to make women more active in their homeplaces. In the last analysis they feel the tension in combining their public and private roles or their professional aspirations and motherhood roles.