Contribution of The Feminist Writers of Two Different Cultures, Emine Semiye and Virginia Woolf, to Women Rights and Women’s Education

Çağlar Demir, Turkey, ID LLCE2016-227;         When the the histories of the societies are analysed, it is seen that the women played important roles in the societies they lived in. However, patriarchal social structure confined the women at home by keeping them away from the social life.  When Ottoman Empire is analysed, it is apparent that there is no name of women in education and work life. Women movement began in the late of 1800. The Pioneer of Women movement is Emine Semiye. She is the daughter of Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, who was a stateman in the reform period of Ottoman Empire. She made use of the luck of being a daughter of an intellectual father by reading and studying hard. She drew the attention of the society to economic freedom for women, the education of women, inequality between women and men in the society and the importance of education for the women in her teaching posts in different parts of Anatolia and giving conferences. According to Emine Semiye, feminism doesn’t mean the endless freedom for women. In that respect, she is against the understanding of feminism in the west. Semiye maintained that  women should live in the social life by carrying on the traditions. In addition, as a successful novelist, she points out that there is  cultural and moral erosion resulting from the wrong westernalization and the problems of women. There is no enmity towards masculinity when her works are analysed.  However,  it is strongly emphasized that there must be equity and equality between men and women. She also remarks that it is necessary for the women  to be in the social sphere to have her own economic independence  and to actualize themselves. To her, a woman must be in the subject position in the society.  In this study, it is aimed to make Emine Semiye known in the world as a pioneer turkish woman writer who risked her life for the freedom of women and expound her precisious contributions to women’s liberty, their education, their rights, and equality.

Key words: Emine Semiye, Patriarchy, Feminism, Ottoman Empire