Gender Relations in Agriculture: Women in Turkey

Abstract

Womens contribution to agricultural production in Turkey is examined in the context of technical change in Ak village Igdir district of Kars province. Interviews were conducted primarily with men. Technical change occurs with government policy which advances from inward growth to structural adjustment and liberalization and behavior change on small farms. Government policies have not considered womens position in agriculture. Macroeconomic policy affects the productivity of labor through capital intensive technology in agriculture. The structural adjustment policy increases exports and reduces farmers subsidies. The effect on women is exploitation because 80% of the farms are small and female labor is substituted for insufficient capital for purchase of tractors and other capital inputs which are sometimes above the cost of main crops when subsidies are reduced. It is cheaper to weed by hand than to use herbicides because wages are so low. Herbicide cost in Ak during the growing season is 3 times more expensive than using female wage labor. Consequently those households with more female members are more likely to increase their income. Under sharecropping arrangements landowners select tenants on the basis of the number of active female laborers in the tenants household. It is also more likely that sugar beet or cotton contracts will be awarded which have a higher crop value. Another consideration for the landowner is the size of a sharecroppers land and their cropping pattern because the female labor supply would be directed to the tenants own land and thereby produce a lower yield on contracted land. Under cash crop production there is use of unpaid family labor. Womens labor is increased because of mens insufficient knowledge of modern methods of cultivation or mens urgent need of revenue. Not only are women exploited in the family and not given management functions to benefit household accumulation but there is no recognition at the national level of their contribution to the market economy. Contracts are given only to men. The village and the technical changes in the village are described. Additional discussion focuses on men in the production process and women in production sharecropping and the increasing importance of female labor and development and culture. A case study illustrates how income and survival of farming households dominate social relations and the importance of the interaction between economic and sociocultural forces pertaining to women in development.