In every restaurant and shop in Istanbul, I encountered a similar difference from U.S. culture. In the U.S., it is typical to see women working in public, service positions such as waitresses or store clerks; this is not the case in Istanbul. Conservative cultural and religious influences seem to manifest in regards to the jobs with female representation. While in Istanbul, we met with a female urban planner and there were many women working in other professional jobs such as government offices or as domestic workers. However, I saw very view women in roles that required constant public interaction. This included women identifiable religious, wearing headscarves, as well as those more secular. The absence of women in these positions was somewhat shocking to me. Not because they are definitively dominated by women in the U.S., but because the total absence of women in these positions was my first observation of the gender disparities present in Turkey’s labor market. The differences in labor opportunities were not just obvious in the observed professions but also in simple building constructions. For example, some buildings we visited either had no women’s bathroom or had a higher ratio of men’s bathrooms, 2:1. This reflected the higher ratio of male workers present.
However, while I easily observed gaps in labor opportunities, I did not see the same overwhelming difference in the demographics of the students at Boğaziçi University when we visited on March 3rd. I saw a mix of male and female students, as well as a mix of both religious and secular female students. I think this difference makes sense given the higher number of women present in professional fields, but I also wonder how may women attain degrees and then don’t use them. Overall, the labor differences visible in Istanbul’s service sector only exhibit one aspect of the gender gap in Turkey.