Paradigm Shifts Within and Between the Women’s and Gender Studies Centres at Universities in Turkey: Modernist, Feminist, and Neo-Conservative Approaches

Abstract

Following the feminist movement of the 1980s, Women’s Studies as an independent academic discipline was established in the early 1990s at Turkish universities. By the year 2017, about 100 Women’s and Gender Studies Centres (WGSCs) existed at universities in Turkey. A research project at the University of Bremen has analysed the institutionalisation and transformation processes of these centres in their relation to academia, state, and civil society based on expert interviews and document collections. This article discusses how six selected WGSCs were shaped differently over the decades by diverse WGS scholars’ political-ideological stances and various scientific paradigms, such as modernist, feminist, or neo-conservative. It also investigates in how far centres’ names, topics, and terms such as ‘gen-der equality’ versus ‘gender justice’ can be identified as indicators of their different academic concepts of women and/or gender. The analysis suggests that the paradigm shifts can be explained, by considering the influential factors of generational belonging, academic feminism, and international WGS debates, as well as recognising the impacts of the relations between the civil society and the state in Turkey that undergo changes due to recent political developments.