News From February
SU Gender 2022
Curious Steps and Meşher Gallery Co-Organized a Walk
The Curious Steps Program and Meşher Gallery will hold joint physical and digital walks between March and May as part of the I-You-They: A Century of Artist Women exhibition being held in the Meşher Gallery. The first walk will take place on March 16th as part of the SU Gender March 2022 Events. To prepare for this walk, the route of which was designed by Meşher Gallery, we organized two workshops on February 21st and 28th, facilitated by Ayşe Gül Altınay, Sema Semih, Ilayda Ece Ova, Ezgi Öz, Özge Ertem, and Ebru Nihan Celkan. The first workshop was an introduction to gender, the city, and storytelling. In the second workshop, Ebru Nihan Celkan and facilitators dove deeper into the stories of the walk. These stories will now be shared with the participants during the forthcoming walks. For more detailed information on these walks, follow the announcements of Meşher Gallery and SU Gender on their social media accounts and other platforms.
The Purple Certificate Program Hosted its Winter School
The Purple Certificate Program Winter School is organized each year to raise awareness on gender equality among teachers and teacher candidates. This year the event took place online between February 5-6 and 12-13. Hülya Adak, Ayşe Gül Altınay, Aslı Ikizoğlu, and Emirhan Deniz Çelebi from SU Gender were among the trainers. 50 people from many different cities came together at the Winter School to discuss themes such as space, disability, literature, material design in the context of their intersection with gender.
Effective Planning and Dissemination of Gender Studies
As part of the Purple Certificate Program, on February 16th we met with teachers in an online workshop titled “Effective Planning and Dissemination of Gender Studies” organized by Kenan Çayır and Ayşe Alan. After Hülya Adak's briefing regarding the Purple Certificate Program Gender Equality in Education Award, teachers and teacher candidates worked together with workshop coordinators to effectively plan, disseminate, and strengthen their work on gender. Follow the Purple Certificate Program social media accounts for upcoming workshops.
GEARING-Roles contest results were announced
As part of the EU funded GEARING-Roles project, that SU Gender is also part of, at competition themed Resistances to Gender Equality was held and a total of 5 people were awarded in two different categories: Research Award and Creativity Award. Sabancı University Cultural Studies graduate student Beste Irem Köse received an award in the research category, and Şebnem Aydın in the creativity category. The award winners will be able to present their work in the project's conference to be held in Estonia.
SU Gender is looking for for a New Teammate
We are looking to hire an education coordinator to join our team to work for the Progender+ program (Training and Counseling for Professionals). Click here for details.
Preparations to launch Progender+ are continuing
SU Gender is preparing to launch ProGender+, an adult education program that involves training and consultancy activities for professionals in the business world on the themes of gender, diversity, and inclusion. Videos on the content of the program will be broadcast on SU Gender social media channels.
Which events did we attend?
ProGender+
-The trainings organized with KordSA (The Reinforcer) within the scope of ProGender+ continued in February. Directed towards managers, white-collar and blue-collar employees, these trainings are conducted by Hülya Adak, Emirhan Deniz Çelebi, and Nazlı Hazar, and consist of sessions on Gender Awareness, Discrimination at Work, and Methods to Counteract. Additionally, Emirhan Deniz Çelebi organized a webinar focusing on gender equality and diversity for Henkel employees.
-The new program we developed for teachers in private high schools with the collaboration of the Purple Certificate Program and ProGender+ started with the training organized at Açı Schools. In the sessions, Emirhan Deniz Çelebi and Hülya Adak covered fundamental concepts, and talked about discrimination and inclusive education. The program will continue in the coming days with the participation of other schools.
-On February 24th, Ayşe Gül Altınay and Sema Semih shared the memory walk experiences of Curious Steps with the participants of the first ‘Akademiden Hallice Konuşmalar’ (Nothing Short of Academia), an online event series organized by SPoD and ÜniKuir.
-The British Consulate General visited SU Gender to learn about gender and women's studies at universities and to strengthen these fields. Marianne Young (Deputy Head), Kate Greany (Deputy Consul General) and Aslı Tekinay (Head of Communication) held a meeting with Hülya Adak on February 3rd at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum.
-SU Gender participated in the NEET launch organized by the Sabancı Foundation. The project titled “Neither in Education, nor in Employment” aims to improve the education and job skills of women between the ages of 18-30. The project was launched at the meeting held at Swissotel on February 23rd by Nevgül Safkan Birsel, partner and General Manager of Sabancı Foundation and member of SU Gender Advisory Board.
-We attended the 9th Women Directors Conference organized online by the Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum on February 22nd. The “2021 Women in the Board of Directors in Turkey Report” was shared with the public at the conference, and the awards for the Board of Directors Empowered by Women were presented to their recipients.
-We participated in the second event of the "Care Labor and Care Economy Post-Covid-19 Policy Dialogue" organized by the UN Women's Office in Turkey that was held online on February 24th. The event was organized with the collaboration of experts from UN Women and the International Labor Organization, and focused on unpaid care labor and the care economy.
- Deniz Gündoğan Ibrişim presented her paper ttiled “Non-anthropocentric forms of agency in Orhan Pamuk and Mohsin Hamid: Environmental Afterlives as Feminist Intervention” at the “Re-Thinking Agency: Non-Anthropocentric Approaches” online conference held at the University of Warsaw on February 4th (3-5 February 2022) as part of the POGETA project. The paper will be published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) as part of a conference special issue.
- Again within the scope of the POGETA project, Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim, together with Sibel Horada and Müge Gedik, organized the “Water as Archive in the Anthropocene” event on February 25th at MSGSU Women's Studies Application and Research Center, and presented her paper titled “Water's Memory: Ecofeminist Approaches.”
Sabancı University Cultural Studies graduate student and SU Gender assistant Berfin Çiçek's article "Metaphors of Mental Unrest: Making Subjectivity and Resistance in Modern Iranian Film and Fiction" was published in the 16th issue of Monograph Journal. Link to read the article: http://www.monografjournal.com/
What’s Next Month?
SU Gender March 2022: #FeministSolidarity
As SU Gender, we will organize online and in-person events under the title #FeministSolidarity throughout the month of March to celebrate the International Women’s Day. Click here to access the program. To register for the events: www.linktr.ee/sugender
Queerfeminist Humor Workshop on March 11th
In this workshop we will talk about what we consider as humor and the brief history of humor, look at some examples of queerfeminist humor from Turkey and other countries, and touch upon the difference between humor and funny to discuss what kind of humor we stand up for. We will then draw cartoons based on issues of gender equality in academia and responding to resistance through humor. You don't need to have previous experience of drawing cartoons and this workshop is open to all and free. The event starts at 10.30 am CET. Please register here: bit.ly/queerfeministhumor
