Don’t Raise A Boy or a Girl, Raise a Child
Living in Turkey, it is hard not to notice that gender inequality is a major and ongoing problem. The country has undeniably patriarchal regions, and women living in these regions are continuously denied their rights, are ranked below men, and in many cases, can’t express their opinions. It is convenient to connect this problem to cultural roots, however, this approach also raises several questions: in the increasingly globalized world that we live in, why hasn’t the society’s stance on gender issues changed, while almost all other cultural aspects of our social life have adjusted themselves into new and modern standards? Why hasn’t the rate of female murders in Turkey decreased over the course of the last twenty years? Why are rape victims still blamed for arousing the rapers, therefore encouraging them for the rape? Last but not least, with the emergence of newer and newer generations, why haven’t gender issues in Turkey gotten any better over the last couple decades? The answers to these questions bring us to the essential cause of all the problems regarding gender inequality in Turkey, and perhaps, the biggest challenge that Turkish women face today: it is not about how many new generations emerge, it is about how these generations are being raised.
Unquestionably, there are some major differences between how a male child and a female child is raised in Turkey. When boys are growing up, having “girl”friends is perceived as something totally natural, even something to be proud of. A boy who has a lot of “girl”friends will probably receive positive reactions from his parents, who will say things like “Look at my boy!” or “When he grows up, he will have no problem finding a wife!” On the other hand, when girls are growing up, their parents usually tend to protect them from their “boy”friends, who can, at any time or place, do them harm. A girl with many “boy”friends would probably be considered as unprotected, and exposed to damage, therefore she will constantly be warned by her parents and other members of society about these “boy”friends. Even though the effect of these differences may appear as temporary, only lasting throughout childhood and adolescence, in reality their results last for the rest of the child’s life. As a girl grows up, her parents continue to protect her, however, as she reaches adulthood, they can no longer do so due to their old age or the increasing independence of the girl from the family, thus the responsibility is transferred from them to their daughter. In the society’s point of view, it is now the girl’s own responsibility to protect herself from the ‘demonic’ dangers that the outside world holds. For that reason, if a grown girl is harassed, raped, or killed, society is inclined to blame it on her, as she has “failed” to fulfill her responsibility of protecting herself. Afterall, her parents were no longer there to keep her safe, therefore she was expected to handle that herself.
This pattern in the Turkish society is also illustrated in Mustang, a 2015 film which tells the remarkable story of five sisters growing up in a rural village in Turkey. In the movie, the five girls are being punished by their grandmother and uncle for playing together with the boys from their school and sharing their interests and hobbies. In order to avoid this unexpected association between the two genders, the grandmother and the uncle start to restrict the girls, interfering with every aspect of their lives including what they wear and what they do in their leisure time. The girls are forbidden from doing activities that are considered “for boys,” such as going to a soccer match of the team they support; instead, they are expected to learn how to cook and serve, which the society considers as appropriate for them. This example once again shows how girls and boys are being raised differently and how this situation affects the perception of the society on different gender issues.
This problems seems like a deep-rooted one, however, it can still be overcome. If boys and girls were raised using the same principles instead of being separated from childhood, they would develop a mutual viewpoint on the issue, and hopefully, the emergence of this new generation cleansed from the from the stereotypic attitudes that were given to its predecessors would mark the beginning of a path leading to the diminish of these problems, and to a Turkey without gender inequality.