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Women and Natural Sciences from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic
Abstract by Seriyye Akan On Session   (Practicing Science and Healing)

On Wednesday, November 13 at 2:30 pm

2024 Annual Meeting

Abstract
From the 1990s onwards, studies on women’s movement in the late Ottoman era have increased, and the cliché that the Turkish Republic, which was founded in 1923, has emancipated women unconditionally and without limits has started to be challenged. Through Nezihe Muhittin’s life story, Yaprak Zihnioğlu demonstrated that the women’s movement could not continue without the consent of the political male elites during the very first years of the Republic. Sanem Timuroğlu, on the other hand, claimed that early Republican male elites intentionally obscured the memory of the late Ottoman women’s movement, which had deep intellectual roots. She also argued that historiography in Turkey on the women’s movement appreciated the late Ottoman women’s movement’s connection to the contemporary ones in the world as late as the 1990s. Furthermore, Elif Ekin Akşit, who analyzed the education of women from the 1770s to the 1940s, asserted that while Ottoman women were taught natural sciences during the late years of the Ottoman Empire, with the foundation of the Republic, these courses were removed from their curriculum and replaced with more “domestic” courses. Under the light of this information, this paper problematizes the fact that the very first women natural scientists emerged during the relatively late years of the Republic and their number stayed limited for a long time, even though the Ottoman women’s movement was very active until the 1920s and the University for Ottoman Women was founded in the first years of the 20th century while having half of its first graduates in the field of natural sciences. In this context, this paper pursues the first graduates of the natural sciences branch at the Ottoman Women’s University and the very first women natural scientists of the Republic and shows that the Republican male elite has not genuinely supported women in the field of science.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
Turkey
Sub Area
None