Women's organizations in fighting violence against women and feminist policy

This study focuses on violence against women, the role of women's organizations in the formulation of policies for violence against women, and feminist policies. How violence against women in Turkey is perceived by civil society organizations as part of civil society and how feminist policies are formulated by them were investigated with a focus on women's civil society organizations. This is a qualitative study. The data were collected from the in-depth interviews with representatives of seven women's civil society organizations that particularly deal with violence against women in Turkey. The data collected from the in-depth interviews were used to analyze how women's organizations made sense of violence against women, what they saw as reasons for violence against women, how they explained the increased visibility of this violence in recent years, what works they conducted regarding the effect of family on this violence, and how to prevent violence, and how they interacted and communicated with policy makers on this issue. As a result of the analysis, it was found that violence against women in Turkey can be attributable to gender inequality, and civil society organizations are working to raise awareness of women in this regard, and policy makers introduce certain legal arrangements, but there are gaps and defects in realizing the legal goals in practice.