How Women’s Associations’ Members Evaluate the Policies for Preventing Violence Against Women in Turkey

NGO’s and civil society are one of the key actors for adoption of women’s policies. NGOs have been influential in determining the global policy framework on gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as national policies in many countries. Thus, one can say that strong women’s movement is important for adoption of good women’s policies. The women’s civil society organizations is strikingly increasing in Turkey but the effectiveness of them on policies is still an issue that is rarely studied. This study aims to analyze the extent to which policies to prevent violence against women were responsive to the main demands of women’s organizations’ members in Turkey. This study deals with two key points. First, it will investigate whether constitution, legislations and policy action plans satisfy the women’s organizations’ members. In relation to this, it will demonstrate whether there are any differences between attitudes, perceptions and opinions among the members of different types of women’s organizations. Second, it will investigate whether implication of such legal changes are seen successful or not by the women in the women’s organizations. This study is a part of a project funded by Scientific Research Coordination Unit of the Social Sciences University of Ankara. In the framework of this project, we run a survey with app. 1000 women which are a member of a women’s association in November and December 2017. These women are randomly selected from a representative sample of women’s association including app. 200 women’s association from İstanbul and Ankara, two biggest cities of Turkey, in Turkey. The results of this study will reveal the attitudes of women’s organization members on different forms of policies produced to prevent violence against women. Moreover, this study also aims to show differences between women’s organizations.