Women’s Work and Life Strategies in a Gendered Agribusiness in Western Anatolia, Turkey: Achievements and Limitations from a Feminist Perspective

This article attempts to explore the link between neoliberalism, globalized agri-food relations and rising authoritarian practices on the basis of laboring practices and experiences of rural women from a feminist perspective in Turkey. It further focuses on peasant-worker women employed as waged labor in one of the large-scale and export-oriented agribusinesses in the Bakırçay Basin Western Anatolia, which will be referred in this paper as the Greenhouse. Based on women’ narratives, it aims to explore the patterns of the emerging gender labor regime that covers paid and unpaid labor of women at the Greenhouse, at home and in the fields. It questions the emergence of the Greenhouse as a large-scale factory-like enterprise with all-year production and how it became possible under AKP rule within the framework of authoritarian neoliberalism and resistance strategies of women. Not only does it concentrate on women’s labor practices as areas of exploitation and domination, but it also seeks to enable possibilities for struggle and change as a part of “empowerment” from a critical perspective. Therefore, this paper sheds lights on the limits and potentials for resistance and change in their lives with reference to their own work and life strategies. Based on a case study from rural Turkey, it also hopes to contribute to the literature exploring authoritarian neoliberalism on the basis of its gendered and localized reflections. I follow a feminist methodology prioritizing women’s agency and experience as a source of knowledge. While employing qualitative techniques, I primarily gathered data through in-depth interviews and participatory observation in the fieldwork that lasted for more than two years with several visits. I participated in the production process at the Greenhouse, the daily routines of the women in their homes, villages and neighborhoods and during social occasions.