Untidy Gender: Domestic Service in Turkey

Gul Ozyegin

Series: Women in the Political Economy

Published by: Temple University Press

Pages: 272

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bt058

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Book Info

Untidy Gender

Book Description:

"A sophisticated and sensitive text on domestic service in Turkey that singles itself out by a powerful account of the micro-sociology of power. It engages the reader in much broader debates about the mutual relations of class and gender, the role of patriarchal controls in shaping informal female labor markets and the management of status differentials by women in their daily lives. An important scholarly contribution written in a lucid and accessible style." --Deniz Kandiyoti, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Untidy Gender takes readers into the interconnected worlds of Turkish maids and the women who employ them, tracing the incorporation of rural migrant women into the interiors of the domestic spheres of the urban middle-classes. Firmly grounded in data collected through a representative survey of 160 domestic workers, in-depth interviews, and participant observation in the kinship-based communities of domestic workers, this book forges a new understanding of the complex interaction between gender and class subordination. Ozyegin traces the lives of two kinds of workers; those from the squatter settlements who work in a number of locations, and those who live with husbands employed as "doorkeepers" or building superintendents in the basements of middle-class apartment buildings. In a literal "upstairs, downstairs" arrangement, the latter women sometimes take on apartment cleaning for clients in the building. At the center of the book are a number of ironies about patriarchy. On the surface, husbands have absolute control over whether or not their wives work, but some women work in secret, and those "doorkeeper" husbands who allow their wives to work often provide child care themselves. Ironically, the very constraints on the spatial and social mobility of the women creates a labor market in which domestic workers' labor is expensive and not readily forthcoming, which, in turn, gives them a degree of power in negotiating their relationship with their middle-class employers. Untidy Gender offers insights not only into the gender and class dynamics of Turkish society, but contributes to the refinement of central terms of feminist scholarship and research on work in the informal sector, cross-class relations between women, gender and class inequality, and women's experiences of modernity and urbanization. The author ends with a personal account of her own difficulties with the class tensions of the maid-employer relationship. "Untidy Gender makes contributions to a large number of debates in several social science fields and sub-fields. And it does so on an extraordinarily sound methodological base: Ozyegin was able to construct a random sample for her 'women in the basement.' This is the gold standard of research, and may be unique in the research annals of studies of domestic workers." --Rae Lesser Blumberg, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia "This original book sheds new light on the dynamics of modernity and newly constituted urban identities. Through a careful ethnographic study of paid domestic work, Ozyegin illuminates the varied ways in which relations of class and gender inequalities are shaped and maintained. American audiences interested in rural-urban migrants, in intersectionalities of race, class, and gender, and in identities, power, and resistance in the workplace will find some of the most compelling ethnography and many valuable theoretical nuggets in this book." --Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Southern California "Ozyegin presents a cutting-edge analysis of the complexities of modernization by focusing on gender relations. While avoiding numerous rhetorical traps around questions of 'difference' Ozyegin seamlessly weaves together a thoughtfully articulated theory with a meticulous empirical analysis of patriarchal and class relations among modern urban women and more traditional migrant women living at the margins of modernity. Given its significant substantive and theoretical contributions, I will look forward to teaching Untidy Gender in my courses." --Judith M. Gerson, Associate Professor, Departments of Sociology and Women's Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

eISBN: 978-1-4399-0348-3

Subjects: Sociology

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Table of Contents

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Front Matter

Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
Table of Contents

Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments (pp. ix-xii)
1 The View from Downstairs

1 The View from Downstairs (pp. 1-52)

Early on a weekday morning in Ankara, people hurry to work as the usual urban scene repeats itself. A middle-class professional woman scurries about her fifth-floor apartment in one of Ankara’s elite neighborhoods. She is rushing to prepare her children for school and get herself and her husband ready for the workday ahead. She helps her husband find his blue-and-yellow striped tie while waiting for her crimson nail polish to dry so she can comb her daughter’s hair. At the same time, in the basement of the apartment building, another woman also prepares for the day ahead. With work-worn hands,...
2 Husbands, Households, and Other Determinants of Women’s Work

2 Husbands, Households, and Other Determinants of Women’s Work (pp. 53-88)

“Let’s eat less rather than you work.” With these words Sevim Belgan’s husband conveyed his discontent when five years ago she first expressed her desire to join the ranks of domestic work to help him financially.¹ Sevim’s husband, a driver in a government office, finally gave in but allows her to work only for a particular employer who is from the same city as he. She now commutes twice a week from her home in one of the squatter settlement districts to a middle-class neighborhood. Meral Kazan’s husband, a postal worker, used the phrase “Women’s employment equals prostitution” to make...
Photographs

Photographs (pp. 89-96)
3 Neither Maids Nor Cleaners

3 Neither Maids Nor Cleaners (pp. 97-125)

By the time Zehra Karamanoğlu’s workday ended at three o’clock one Tuesday afternoon, she had washed breakfast and lunch dishes, cleaned the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, made the beds, ironed the two loads of laundry she had washed the day before, and vacuumed and dusted the living room. In between her major chores, she changed the cat’s litter, watered the plants, cleaned some spinach, and served tea to her employer. She will return to the same house the next day to perform similar tasks.
Gülsev Zeynel, on the same day, spent most of her eight-hour workday down on her hands...
4 Intimate Weapons of the Weak

4 Intimate Weapons of the Weak (pp. 126-151)

At a bus stop between a middle-class residential district and a squatter settlement, a group of domestic workers, clutching plastic bags, stand apart from the urban women returning home from work and shopping. Their ill-fitting, ill-matched outfits draw attention to their economic status and their efforts to emulate the middle-class women around them. The plastic bags they carry contain the peasantşalvar—their work clothes—and also may be stuffed with hand-me-down clothes given to them by their employers. Do they carry the change of clothes to conceal their peasant backgrounds?
The contents of the plastic bags and the women’s...
5 The Domestic Work of Maids, Mothers, and Men

5 The Domestic Work of Maids, Mothers, and Men (pp. 152-176)

In middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods of Ankara when most men are away at offices playing the role of distant bread-winner fathers, it is not unusual to see other men strolling at an easy pace, holding a toddler’s hand. These men are doorkeepers whose wives are out working. These are also men who are thought to constitute the most traditional segment of men in the Turkish society. But inside the home do the same doorkeeper fathers also change diapers, feed small children, cook, and wash the dishes afterward?
Are we really observing profound departures from the gendered division of labor among...
6 Earning Power and Women’s Prerogative

6 Earning Power and Women’s Prerogative (pp. 177-208)

“We worked but never saw the face of money.” So women in this study described their lives as peasant women. This sentence expresses a powerful awareness of, and sometimes ambivalence toward, changing experiences and life conditions. With these words the women characterized an important part of their life as they recalled the transition they made from unpaid family workers to urban, “individualized” wage earners. Holding, managing, and spending money is a concept alien to the identity of the peasant woman and antithetical to the precise definition of peasant womanhood in social scientific descriptions. Urban domestic workers now have access to...
7 Conclusion

7 Conclusion (pp. 209-224)

This study is about women and men who left their peasant communities to find better lives for themselves in the urban center of Ankara, where their work and lives became closely involved with the urban middle class who employed them. While the data I collected as an interviewer and participant observer provides the foundation of this study, my own relationship with these people as an urban middle-class woman informs it also. In the following pages I glance at a few of my experiences while highlighting the theoretical and empirical conclusions of this study.
I was born and grew up in...
Appendix: Sampling Procedures

Appendix: Sampling Procedures (pp. 225-228)
Notes

Notes (pp. 229-246)
References

References (pp. 247-264)
Index

Index (pp. 265-276)