Gendered experiences during COVID-19 in Turkey and the meaning of home

Abstract

This work aims to uncover the changing meaning of home by focusing on gender-based experiences of staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. The findings show that the meaning of home is not straightforward and, depending on one’s gender-based experiences and diverse experiences of staying at home arise. In this work, Doreen Massey’s (1994) joint conceptualisations of spatiality and identity for understanding space and place in general and home in particular not as an absolute but as a relational place, together with Iris Marion Young’s (2005) conceptualisation of homemaking provide the theoretical context for linking the stay-at-home experiences of the participants with the meaning of home during the COVID-19 pandemic from a gender perspective. Furthermore, gender-based experiences of staying at home during the COVID-19 in Turkey are meaningful in the context of the discourses and social policy interventions of the existing government producing the social organization of space from an anti-gender and a conservative neo-liberal perspective. This work is based on online qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with 32 self-identified female participants. Interview data were interpreted using the three thematic categories of ‘home as a dwelling,’ ‘home as a burden,’ ‘home as a place for preservation. The findings support the existing research on the gender-specific organisation of care work and time usage and further contribute to the field by demonstrating that home was a gendered space sustained through mutual relations between gender practices and spatial practices before and during the pandemic.