Gender and Framing: Gender as a Main Determinant of Frame Variation in Turkey’s Anti-Hydropower Movement

Citation:

Yaka, Özge. 2019. “Gender and Framing: Gender as a Main Determinant of Frame Variation in Turkey’s Anti-Hydropower Movement.” Women’s Studies International Forum 74 (May-June): 154–61.

Author: Özge Yaka

Abstract:

Framing literature has so far failed to construct gender as an analytical category that shapes the ways in which we perceive, identify and act upon grievances. This article builds on the insights of feminist theory and employs the conceptual vocabulary of the social movement framing perspective in maintaining gender as a main parameter of framing processes. Drawing on ethnographic research on local community struggles against hydropower plants in the Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey, this article maintains the centrality of gender to framing processes. It analyzes the gendered difference between men’s macro-framings and women’s cultural and socio-ecological framings, which is rooted in their differing relationships with their immediate environment, as well as with the state and its institutions. The article maintains that the framings of women, which represent the immediacy of the environment, are more effective in gaining public support and shaping movement outcomes. In this sense, constructing gender as an important determinant of “frame variation” is essential not only to reveal women’s frames that are largely silenced through and within the mechanisms of social movement organization, but also to stress their centrality in shaping repertoires of contention, public reception and movement outcomes.

Keywords: gender, social movements, framing, Turkey, hydropower

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: MENA, Asia, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Turkey

Year: 2019