Mary Lou O'Neil

Gender and the Wage Gap in Turkish Academia

Turkey maintains one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in Europe, but also boasts an above average number of female professors. Turkey is well above the European average (15 per cent) with approximately 28 per cent of full professorships being occupied by women. Despite these seemingly positive indications, do men and women in Turkish academia earn the same wages? This study explores whether or not there exists a gendered pay gap in Turkish academia. Using data collected from a survey of more than 700 Turkish academics, we observed that there is a gendered wage gap that disadvantages women, but only at the highest pay levels found at private universities indicating the existence of intra-class inequality, where men and women despite occupying the same class position are compensated differently.

Breaking the rules in interactive media design education

In todays interactive media design it is difficult for a designer to create aesthetic innovations and to break free from ordinariness. The most important factor limiting interactive media design aesthetics is that education seems to be more focused on following traditional rules of interaction design rather than innovative approaches. These rules limit creativity and often relegate design students to producing ordinary interface solutions. This is especially burdensome for us as teachers. In order to address this problem, we developed an education model inspired by Lars von Triers film Five Obstructions. We call this model ‘breaking the rules’. In the ‘breaking the rules’ approach students produce, within a range of probabilities, design problem solutions in cases of total or partial visual/auditory/tactile obstructions. The most important outputs of the model are (1) to make design student think/look outside of the ordinary, (2) to produce unusual solutions, (3) to maximise design solutions with sound.

It was as if society didn't want a woman to get an abortion: a qualitative study in Istanbul, Turkey.

INTRODUCTION In 1983, abortion without restriction as to reason was legalized in Turkey. However, at an international conference in 2012, the Prime Minister condemned abortion and announced his intent to draft restrictive abortion legislation. As a result of public outcry and protests, the law was not enacted, but media reports suggest that barriers to abortion access have since worsened. OBJECTIVES We aimed to conduct a qualitative study exploring womens recent abortion experiences in Istanbul, Turkey. STUDY DESIGN In 2015, we conducted 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with women aged 18 or older who had obtained abortion care in Istanbul on/after January 1, 2009. We employed a multimodal recruitment strategy and analyzed these interviews for content and themes using deductive and inductive techniques. RESULTS Women reported on a total of 19 abortions. Although abortion care is available in private facilities, only one public hospital provides abortion services without restriction as to reason. Women who had multiple abortions in different facility types described quality of care more positively in the private sector. Unmarried women considered their marital status when making the decision to seek an abortion and reported challenges obtaining comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services. All participants were familiar with the Turkish governments antiabortion discourse and believed that this was reflective of an overarching desire to restrict womens rights. CONCLUSION Public abortion services in Istanbul are currently limited, and private abortion services are accessible but relatively expensive to obtain. Recent antiabortion political rhetoric appears to have negatively impacted access and service quality. IMPLICATIONS This is the first qualitative study exploring womens experiences obtaining abortion services in Turkey since the proposed abortion restriction in 2012. Further research exploring the experiences of unmarried women and abortion accessibility in other regions of the country is warranted.

Women's Property Rights in Turkey

Abstract This article takes Turkey as a case study, exploring marital and inheritance regimes with regard to their impact on women and their ability to protect womens property rights. The aim of the study is to bring to light the workings of the legal system that regulate the acquisition of property and to scrutinize the gap between the law and its practice in Turkish society. By taking this approach, the article does not only focus on laws but also on how these laws are adopted by society. Thus, two levels of analysis—de jure and de facto—are utilized for an investigation of womens property rights and hence their social and economic status.

The availability of abortion at state hospitals in Turkey: A national study

INTRODUCTION Abortion in Turkey has been legal since 1983 and remains so today. Despite this, in 2012 the Prime Minister declared that, in his opinion, abortion was murder. Since then, there has been growing evidence that abortion access particularly in state hospitals is being restricted, although no new legislation has been offered. OBJECTIVES The study aimed to determine the number of state hospitals in Turkey that provide abortions. STUDY DESIGN The study employed a telephone survey in 2015-2016 where 431 state hospitals were contacted and asked a set of questions by a mystery patient. If possible, information was obtained directly from the obstetrics/gynecology department. I removed specialist hospitals from the data set and the remaining data were analyzed for frequency and cross-tabulations were performed. RESULTS Only 7.8% of state hospitals provide abortion services without regard to reason which is provided for by the current law, while 78% provide abortions when there is a medical necessity. Of the 58 teaching and research hospitals in Turkey, 9 (15.5%) provide abortion care without restriction to reason, 38 (65.5%) will do the procedure if there is a medical necessity and 11 (11.4%) of these hospitals refuse to provide abortion services under any circumstances. There are two regions, encompassing 1.5 million women of childbearing age, where no state hospital provides for abortion without restriction as to reason. CONCLUSION The vast majority of state hospitals only provide abortions in the narrow context of a medical necessity, and thus are not implementing the law to its full extent. It is clear that although no new legislation restricting abortion has been enacted, state hospitals are reducing the provision of abortion services without restriction as to reason. IMPLICATIONS This is the only nationwide study to focus on abortion provision at state hospitals.

American Writers in Istanbul (review)

What if one’s pastor disagrees with these end-times scenarios, based on what he or she has learned in seminary? Since 9/11, evangelical publishers have been issuing sober, judicious texts, aimed at helping leaders understand Islam more deeply and presumably more sympathetically. Which perspective will win out? Historians can only wait and see, but thanks to Thomas Kidd, we see much more now than we did. Calvin College Joel A. Carpenter

Prayer Bead Gestures and Television: A Case Study on Cultural Inspirations for Interaction Art Education

ABSTRACT The authors, interactive design-art educators, recount their experience in using cultural inspirations as part of student exercises. The authors found that, although students proposed various design concepts drawing from the surrounding culture, very few moved beyond experience design art. In order to remedy this situation without giving explicit direction, the authors encouraged students to examine cultural habits and/or artifacts from their past or their current lives in the hope that this could generate innovative design ideas. One such project is the Prayer Bead Gesture Based TV Input Device.