Migration and Environment from a Gender Perspective: Examples from Civil Society in Turkey

Dr. KRISTEN BIEHL and Dr. OZLEM ASLAN

Sabancı University and KHAS Core Program

March 22, Tuesday, 20:00

Kristen Biehl and Özlem Aslan will be sharing the findings of their latest report on gender perspectives of civil society organizations in the fields of migration and environment. Academic literature contains numerous studies on the ways that gender inequalities affect the direct subjects of migration movements and/or environmental disasters. However, there are only a limited number of studies examining gender awareness among civil society organizations working in these fields, whose numbers and influence have started growing exponentially over recent decades both globally and in Turkey. Moreover, there are seemingly no studies addressing migration and environment together, as they are often seen as separate topics both for research purposes and by civil society organizations. This research is thus shaped around two basic questions: How do civil society organizations working on migration and environmental issues in Turkey associate gender with their field of work, and how do they integrate gender awareness and equality both in the works they carry out and their organizational structures? In what ways does a research project conducted around this question with an intersectional approach contribute to addressing migration, environment, and gender issues together? It builds on semi-structured interviews carried out with 30 NGOs (15 working on migration related issues and 15 working on environmental issues), all of which actively carry out rights-based works in Turkey and do not describe themselves as women and/or LGBTI+ organizations in their mission statements.