When people learn of what we are doing, a common question they ask is that with new-found economic opportunity, whether or not any of the women who work with us want to leave their husbands. To date, no one has asked if the ladies’ home lives are better because they are happier and therefore, their families are also happier. Visitors also ask if it is difficult for the women to get permission from their husbands to come. While we have a few women who have stood up to or have convinced their husbands to ‘permit’ them to come, focusing on the fact that they will be able to augment the family income, by and large, if ‘permission’ is an issue, most of those women do not come. Most of our ladies are most comfortable in their own homes, in their own neighborhoods, with their own family members. They are not used to scrutiny and criticism any more than they are used to praise, never mind unfamiliar surroundings.
Many of the women who come to the workshop do so because they are seeking a sense of self, a sense of self-esteem. They spend their whole lives affirming others and no one – or hardly anyone – affirms them. They are all excellent cooks and keep spotless houses. But that is expected of them and so much of their identities are based on just that: their meals and their cleaning skills and that they are wives and mothers. There is little else in their lives that stands out, that sets them apart, that they can look at and say to themselves, ‘I am proud of having done that,’ never mind anyone else saying that to them. As a friend recently reminded me, this is still a collective society and people tend to follow the norm, to do what has been done for decades.
Recent reports show there is still a long ways to go to bridge the gender gap in Turkey. There are still less than 25% of women in the official work force and participation in government hovers at 5% (UNDP, 2009). While there are plenty of women who stay at home due to tradition, pressure from the husband or family, there are many women who stay at home because that is where they are most comfortable. They have never seen themselves in a role other than mother, homemaker.
It takes a great deal of courage to cross the threshold of our workshop. To do so means allowing yourself to venture into the unknown, to learn a skill you do not know, to be with people who are not part of your familiar circle. In short, you are exposing yourself to vulnerability, crossing the path of many men who dominate three of the four corners where our workshop is located.
The women who come to our workshop are learning to feel a sense of accomplishment within a sense of a community. While we focus on creating opportunities that will hopefully lead to greater gender equality, what needs to be fostered just as much as the reality of income generation, is the sense of worth.
Working within these realities, I am still working to overcome some of the challenges that come with this endeavor that go way beyond the basic communication challenges: the form-function disconnect; wanting to enable-empower our ladies while at the same time producing marketable and sellable items. I am their first boss, yet I do not quite fit the image that they have of ‘patron.’ I want to encourage them to go beyond their own mental borders, to expand their horizons and yet I still find myself establishing many of the perimeters that they work in. As I work on sorting out my own contradictions and try to expand my own mental borders, I am still dealing with the day-to-day issues.
It took me a while to assert myself as the color guardian. Let’s be honest: I am the Color Bitch. Many of our bags close with zippers, which in my mind, as well as our distributors and customers, should be of the same or at least a coordinated color as the bag itself. Two tones of the same color do not necessarily look good together. It may not be easy being green especially if those two shades of green should never be seen side-by-side. Color combinations may be a matter of taste; I need to concern our products with a matter of what can sell. Some colors that I would never put together actually work on some of the local houses here in Ayvalik, but the same does hold true for our bags that we target to up-scale markets.
Before I took over color control, I tried numerous times to make my point, oblivious that I was expounding on a topic that did not register, was not comprehensible. Not ready to give up, I tried different tactics. One day I found myself holding a bag, zipper side up, and showing it to its maker. I then turned the bag on its side, so she could examine the colors and then look back to the zipper.
I then asked one of the stupidest questions of my life, ‘Can you see that the color of the zipper does not go with the colors of the bag?’
As the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized that she had no clue as to what I was talking about. She was wearing a yellow, green and purple striped long-sleeve tee-shirt with a brown, red and blue floral skirt. While not all our ladies dress the same way, the ever-so-obvious was looking me in the face. I had been waiting for results that would never come. There was no way that she was going to see that the color of the zipper and the colors of the bag were not in sync. No, in her mind, function was paramount; form could come later, if at all.
I finally understood what ‘form-function disconnect’ was all about and added ‘color selection’ to my own job description.
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