Ayse Dursun | Organized Muslim Women in Turkey[...]

Center for West European Studies & EU Jean Monnet Center

Organized Muslim Women in Turkey: An Intersectional Approach to Building Women’s Coalitions This talk explores the politics of organized Muslim women in Turkey and analyzes their coalitions with other – secular feminist, Kurdish etc. – women’s movements from an intersectional perspective. It provides empirical evidence for significant changes in Muslim women’s politics under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and points to the increasing difficulty to build cross-movement women’s coalitions in the face of rising religious conservatism and authoritarianism. Ayse Dursun studied Political Science and English Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main und graduated in 2010. Following her graduation, she started a PhD on the topic “Muslim Women’s Movements in Turkey: An Intersectional Approach to Coalition Building” at the Department of Political Science of the University of Vienna. During her PhD, she worked as a research assistant at the same Department for the following projects: “Fördert Föderalismus Frauen? Föderalisierte Gleichstellungspolitik in Österreich und Deutschland” (Does Federalism Promote Gender Equality? Federalized Gender Equality Policies in Austria and Germany) (duration: 2012-2014) as well as “In Whose Best Interests? Exploring Unaccompanied Minors‘ Rights through the Lens of Migration and Asylum Processes” (MinAs) (duration: July 2014-December 2015). In May 2018, she received her PhD. From January until September 2019 she was working as a researcher for the research project Migrant Communities and Children in a Transforming Europe (MiCREATE) at the Department for Political Science. Since October 2019 she is Post Doc Assistant with research focus on Gender and Politics at the Department of Political Science. She is Steering Committee member of the Standing Group “Gender and Politics” of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). The Talking Gender in Europe lecture series is organized by the Center for West European Studies and the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence with support from the Lee and Stuart Scheingold European Studies Fund, the EU Erasmus+ Program, the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, and the Center for Global Studies.