Women who make progress happen

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, allow me to share some of the voices and moments that have shined from this page, illuminating women who make their country better.

After 12 years of struggling for a parliamentary commission on gender equality, last month women in Turkey finally gained a commission mandated to represent them at the highest levels of government Ğ complete with a big budget and the ears of Parliament and the Prime Ministry. But the moment arrived despite setbacks, and backlash. Since women’s progress on the Turkish Penal Code in 2004, a clear backlash has emerged from all sides, leading women's advocate, Pınar İlkkaracan, told me in December. "First it’s coming from the government itself and filters through the police and the judiciary."

The rights organization İlkkaracan founded and directs, Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR), confronts the government’s mounting efforts to control women through morality. Her group trains more than 3,000 women in intensive 4.5 month programs that help them realize their rights and abilities. Across the country these trainees have been establishing their own local organizations.

"What good news there is to report on behalf of Turkish women emanates from local groups and the changes they have brought about in their communities," İlkkaracan said. Such was the case in Van in December with the formation of a municipal gender equality commission. "In Cannakale, the local group ELDER started with police training and now all the people in the city are gender sensitive," she laughed.

Forging new paths

İlkkaracan edited a book published in English last year called "Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses" with contributors from Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine and Turkey. In Turkey and around the world, doctors, lawyers, judges and lawmakers say looking at a woman’s hymen can determine whether or not she has had sexual intercourse with a man. "This is in fact a lie," said Emek Ergün, Turkish translator of ’Virgin: The Untouched History’.

In her translation "Bekáretin El Değmemiş Tarihi" released last year, Ergün reviews public debates around virginity since the 1980’s and problematic conceptualizations of virginity in major legal documents Ğ such as the Penal Code. She also exposes the medical profession for allowing virginity examinations and "repair" surgeries.

With only one in four women in Turkey working, dozens of women in the Aegean town of Ayvalık and in Diyarbakır are taking economic and environmental matters into their own hands. At Çöp (M)adam, women make fashionable handbags from empty ice-cream containers, potato chip bags and candy wrappers. This summer, a student grant winner in an American university, Ecem Erşeker, will distribute $10,000 in microfinance grants to enable Anatolian migrant women living in squatter settlements in Istanbul to pursue self-employment opportunities.

Following her peeled-back performance in Umit Unal’s "Ara", Selen Uçer told me in Adana hours before she won her first "Best Actress" award this summer that she was confident about her future, "whatever it brings." "I might quit acting and sing or meet a man and sell tomatoes." With good roles harder to find for everyone this year, I was lucky to find her onstage Thursday night singing sultry jazz. No tomatoes, no man, only Selen in the spotlight telling a story.