religious schools were banned; primary education
was made compulsory for both boys and girls; and
Western codes of dressing were supported. These
reforms were significant in their ascription of a new
role for women, who were to take part in the pub-
lic sphere as a sign of Westernization. The republi-
can elites were of the opinion that women were not
only to act as a medium of modernization but were
also to take on an instrumental role. Women as
homemakers and as mothers who would raise the
future generations of citizens according to the
ideals of the state were to distribute the values of
the republic and to construct a modern family. This
was not a means of confining women to the domes-
tic sphere; in addition to their roles in the house-
hold, women were to take part in the public sphere
by way of education and work.
Although the Kemalist reforms resulted in the
increasing visibility of women in the public sphere,
this reflected more the case of elite families in urban
areas who were committed to the republican ideals
(Abadan-Unat 1991, 183). The peripheral masses,
mostly in rural areas, were dominated by Islamic
values that asserted the segregation of the sexes and
confined women to domesticity. This section of so-
ciety was reluctant to send its daughters to schools
beyond primary level. In order to convince tradi-
tional families to allow their daughters to be edu-
cated without disrupting the patriarchal ideology
and prescribed gender roles, in the 1930s the Turk-
ish state started to establish girls’ institutes in accord-
ance with the Kemalist reforms. This development
illustrates the consensus between the Kemalist
modernizers and the traditional families on the
gender roles of women centered on domesticity.
The girls’ institutes were single-sex educational
institutes at high school level where daily contact
with the opposite sex was curtailed. In these
schools students were trained to be good house-
wives and mothers. The establishment of the girls’
institutes emerged out of a policy of compromise
between the state and the society: female children
were to be educated, but along the lines of their
gender roles and not in a coeducational environ-
ment. With the girls’ institutes, the state would en-
sure women’s education and women would spread
a modern and Westernized lifestyle to society.
The education program of the girls’ institutes
served to rationalize and modernize domesticity.
Subjects offered at the institutes included needle-
work, handicrafts, knitting, courtesy, painting,
child development, family economics, nutrition,
and so forth. With the aim of becoming good
housewives, the students were taught how to sew
and iron Western attire, how to welcome guests138 domesticity
with Western etiquette, how to use dinner services
and serve food at a table. At a time when food was
eaten with wooden spoons on the floor, these
courses served to implement the modern lifestyle. In
order to become good mothers, the students were
taught how to bring up the future generation with
scientific and medical knowledge. For instance,
they learned that feeding bottles and diapers needed
to be sterile and that when children became ill, they
were not to be cured by old wives’ techniques but
by medical doctors and nurses. After centuries of
women doing the same work of mothering and
housekeeping, transferring their know-how from
generation to generation, students were now being
taught in public institutions with schoolteachers
under a scientific curriculum.
The institutes’ objective of modernizing tradi-
tional femininity in the service of the republic’s ori-
entation toward the West resulted in two paradoxes
(Ç. Toktaç2002, 427). First, although these schools
trained students how to be good housewives, some
of the graduates did not become housewives exclu-
sively. With the high school diplomas they had
earned they worked in the public sphere as civil ser-
vants in state offices such as post offices or banks.
Second, among the graduates who chose to work,
some did not marry and become mothers as antici-
pated (motherhood in Turkey is strictly confined to
marriage). These outcomes became possible with
the specific track of Turkish modernity and the
opportunities it offered to women. The Kemalist
reforms, imposed from above, enabled women to
take part in the public sphere and women in return
adopted these reforms willingly and elaborated
them. Women who perceived themselves empow-
ered by education and work were able to stand on
their own feet. Women were able to redefine their
gender roles and take a greater part in public life.
In 1974, the girls’ institutes were changed into
girls’ vocational high schools and the educational
program was reformed. The restructured schools
prioritized vocational education and employment.
Due to the industrialization of Turkey and the
incompatibility of the former education program
with the labor markets, the curricula of the voca-
tional schools were more oriented toward the needs
of industry. Today, the courses given at girls’ voca-
tional high schools are industrial design, textile
painting and weaving, pastry cooking, interior dec-
oration, food analysis, electronics, jewelry making,
hairdressing, and the like. The change from the
girls’ institutes to vocational high schools marks the
difference in the approach to women: the former
aimed to produce housewives and mothers, the lat-
ter members of the workforce.