Abstract
From the founding years of the Ottoman Empire, women actively participated in economic life, primarily within households through agricultural and craft-based activities. In the 19th century, they began working in workshops and factories. Intellectual transformations during the Second Constitutional Era and the First World War paved the way for women to take on more skilled roles and experience voluntary and forced labor for more women. Academic literature has studied women’s professionalization journeys and the types of work they performed from various perspectives. However, by the Republican era, improvements had been made to women’s working conditions in the Ottoman Empire, but their conditions have often been overlooked. Furthermore, women’s working conditions during that period were far from favorable. Unhealthy work environments, long working hours, limited rest periods, and low wages despite performing the same work as men, all served to disadvantage women. Due to prevailing perceptions of women’s physiological characteristics, they were expected to have better working conditions. The protection of working women in the workplace and the improvement of their working conditions were not only related to their status as women but also to their motherhood. One of the prescriptions proposed for the state’s restoration to its former power in the late Ottoman period was to improve the situation of women, including the family. Indeed, 21st-century lawyers and politicians are questioning and regulating the working conditions of working women, working to protect both women and the family. This is particularly relevant to the pre- and postnatal processes of women. This article examines the working conditions of women in the Ottoman Empire and the challenges they faced in the workforce. It also explores the following questions: Why did women work despite poor conditions and low wages? Were men doing the same work as women in the Ottoman Empire under the same conditions? Or was this negative situation unique to women? The article’s primary objective is to demonstrate that the need and demand for improved working conditions for women were voiced before the Republican era.
Keywords: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Kadın işçiler, Çalışma koşulları, Cinsiyet Rolleri, Sanayileşme
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