Women in turkish higher education management

Abstract

This paper examines gender equality in Turkey and Turkish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The historical background and an overview of the legislative context for gender equality in Turkey is explained. A series of reforms enacted by the state of the Turkish Republic following its foundation by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923, were aimed at giving women equal status with men. The secular ideology and Westernizing reforms enabled the rise in women’s education and senior management in Turkey. Since 1993, there has been a significant increase in the number and share of women teaching staff (Özkanlı, 2007). There has also been an increase in research and publications on gender (Arslan, 2014). Historical, social and cultural factors explain the relatively high representation of Turkish women in professorial positions, and the support to advance to senior academia (Özkanlı and White, 2008). However, there are disciplinary differences, with a higher representation of women in language-based studies at almost every level and a lower representation in engineering and technology. The number of academic women varies by discipline. Besides, there is a high representation of women in professoriate in Turkey. On the other hand, women are under-represented in senior management, especially at Rector/Vice-Rector and at Dean Levels in Turkey (Neale and Özkanlı, 2010). Qualitative data analysis from interviews and document analysis using the “Success Case Study Method” (Yin, 2018) were undertaken in this paper. Ethics approval was secured before conducting in-depth interviews. A success case study university is presented because it had made great progress in gender equality in education, research and training. According to the findings of this research, increased support from the university such as mentoring for leadership roles, improved childcare/elderly care facilities, positive segregation and quotas can increase the number of female managers in Turkish Universities.