The relationship between women's perception of masculinity and religion in the context of gender: The case of Ankara

This study is a descriptive study to determine women's perception of masculinity within the context of religious references and daily life. The main purpose of the study is to determine the perceptions of masculinity in the context of social gender roles in the family and in daily life, also religious social gender roles depending on different variables, and to reveal whether there is a relationship between them or not. In line with the purpose of the study, a questionnaire was applied to 700 women with different demographic characteristics living in Ankara in 2021. In the "Perception of Masculinity Scale", which was developed for the first time by conducting validity and reliability tests with the SPSS 22 program, six basic sub-dimensions were able to obtain valid scores to measure women's masculinity perceptions. These sub-dimensions are titled as; Religious Masculinity Roles in the Family, Social Masculinity Roles, Spouses' Gender Roles, Religious Masculinity Roles in Society, Stereotyped Masculinity Roles and Masculinity Roles related to Religious Rights. In the study, demographic characteristics of women such as age, marital status, duration of marriage, having children, education, occupation, income status are examined along with examination of religious life with its dimension of worship. In addition to these, the relationships between the dimentions worship of parents and their religious life, sources of obtaining religious knowledge, the state of researching the religious suitability aspect of something before doing it, the types of religious books they read, and their fathers' attitudes towards other family members were also found appropriate to be examine. According to the findings of the research, the most accepted propositions by women are the items taken place in the "religious masculinity roles in the family" dimension, while the least accepted propositions consist of the items taken place in the "stereotyped masculinity roles" dimension. Therefore, it has been observed that women have an equalitarian understanding between genders. However, according to some prominent results, as age, duration of marriage, number of children, degree of belief related to worship, degree of belief level of parents related to worship, and reading religious books increase, women's acceptance of masculinity roles also increases. Increasing education level, continuing professional life, specially working in the private sector and having understanding/conciliatory fathers reduce women's perception of masculinity and make them more prone to the equalitarian attitude. Keywords: Women, Perception of Gender, Masculinity, Perception of Masculinity