A SEGE-Based Investigation on Women-Friendly Practices of Municipaties

Abstract

Cities, which have the characteristic of being a social space, have turned into main centers where inequalities arising from gender roles are experienced over time. However, all individuals living in cities should use public space equally, benefit from the tools of democracy, and behave equally in terms of participation and representation. In most civilized countries where women and men have equal conditions in urban life within the framework of acquired legal rights, these are guaranteed by law. However, the rules determined in this legal framework and the application area do not progress in parallel. Especially in municipalities that provide urban services, it has been a frequently discussed topic that has been criticized from various perspectives, such as the neglect of women’s services, the limited representation of women, and the fact that women are not taken into account in the design of public spaces. In the face of these criticisms, municipalities have tried to tolerate the negativities by increasing the ‘women-friendly’ practices. In the framework, the prepared study aims to identify the ‘women-friendly’ practices of municipalities in Turkey. In the study, the document analysis method, one of the qualitative research techniques, was used. In line with this, the ‘women-friendly’ practices of the cities in the upper, middle and lower developed levels were investigated through the annual report, based on the SEGE index, which shows the development level of the provinces in Turkey. Yalova as the city at the upper level, Afyonkarahisar as the city at middle level, and Kars as the city at the lower level were chosen as the sample and wore the subject of the research. The activity reports of the municipalities responsible for the management of urban-public services in these cities were scanned, analyzed and the findings were presented in tables.