Güçlenme Bağlamında Kadın Kooperatifleri: Feminist Bir Araştırma

Abstract

This research aims to present the role of the cooperatives in the aspects of individual/psychological, socio-cultural, economic and political empowerment of women. Feminist methodology principles had been employed in the qualitative research which has been conducted in accordance with this purpose. Subjects of this research have been chosen by purposive sampling and maximum variation sampling methods. In this respect; in-depth interviews have been made with 28 female copartners of 21 different cooperatives from seven different regions of Turkey which have been founded between 2002 - 2021. Data which has been obtained by semi-structured interview form was resolved by descriptive analysis approach. For the resolution of data, MAXQDA 2022 Analytics Pro qualitative data analysis software has been used. Main result of the research is that women’s empowerment is possible through cooperatives and that female co-partners of cooperatives are empowered in individual/psychological, socio-cultural, economic and political dimensions. Process of empowerment may vary from woman to woman since they include subjective experiences, however; it can be concluded that female co-partners of cooperatives are gaining power mostly in individual/psychological and socio-cultural aspects. Following these two aspects; next aspect is political empowerment and afterwards the economic empowerment. Despite the potential of the cooperatives, the expected positive result in economic empowerment could not be created, which is a very conspicuous situation. Through cooperatives, women’s capacity to cope with problems and their self-confidence have increased, social support and social status have advanced and positive changes in terms of gender equality have occurred in their lives. Additionally, it has been concluded that they got the chance of getting to know different people and different cultures via cooperatives. Women’s gaining of an institutional identity and political participation and their organized struggle in solidarity with other women in defense of their rights are also among the achievements. Finally, it has been observed that women obtain financial income by taking place in the production processes in the cooperative and they obtain new knowledge, skills and experiences. The research is ended by suggestions for eliminating the factors of which restrains women’s empowerment and solving current problems of women’s cooperatives for increasing the role of cooperatives in women’s empowerment.