Being woman in yirca and labour of peasant women: Soap maker woman as the experience of empowerment

In this study, it has been aimed to discuss the labour and the struggle of women from Yırca which is one of the villages attached to the town of Soma in Manisa province. The study has been constructed in the scope of feminist and ethnographic methodology, and the data has been based on the in-depth interviews and participant observation obtained from the field study. Women of Yırca resisted against the construction of the third coal power plant in their village in 2014. In spite of the success of this resistance, still 6600 olive trees of the villagers have been cut. The decrease of agricultural fields destructed those women's almost one and only public space. For this reason, women of Yırca have started a soap business with the brand name of the Handmade and Homemade Yırca Hanımeli. In this scope, the study focuses on the soap house as a collective place and whether paid or unpaid working experiences of women of Yırca. In this study, the struggle experience of peasant women from unpaid household and agricultural workers to paid labor in the village is examined. As a collective space, the soap house has raised the solidarity between women. As a result of this solidarity, the study defends that the pressure of these women's husbands has been reduced. In other words, it is argued that women who have succeeded in breaching patriarchy in the village through women's solidarity provide empowerment for themselves. Women's solidarity and existence struggles by creating a space in the public sphere and their empowerment strategies have been examined. In addition to this, the experience of being women in the village and the patriarchal capitalism have been examined and it has been tried to be evaluated within the framework of the village's specific conditions. Finally the study has aimed to expose the experiences of village's women from unpaid to paid labour and to make their invisible labour visible. Key words: Labour of peasant woman, Industrialisation, Agriculture, Empowerment Strategies, Yırca Village