Steel Flowers of the Empire: The Ottoman Ladies

The current study aims to reveal that we can neither talk about a complete seclusion of the female population within the socio-economic structure of the Ottoman Empire, nor present a single female image, which had represented all Ottoman women. To prove this, a comparative methodological analysis which exposes the similarities and differences of the Ottoman ladies’ conditions both from each other and from their Western counterparts, is going to be applied. Due to having limited space, the subject will be evaluated within certain spheres and the focus will be mainly on the nineteenth century. After mentioning diverse rhetorics and analysis of some cliché convictions found in the traveler accounts, the paper will continue with the issues of female private property and polygamy, since the lacking of the former one and existence of the later one usually come to fore in the criticisms directed against the Ottoman society. Apart from these, it will become clear that the nineteenth century female educational improvements made positive contributions to Ottoman women’s lives, but because of their narrow scopes and targets, in occupational sense, these developments could not have pledged great promises. Nevertheless, the historical sources imply Ottoman female population’s partial involvement in the economic life of the Empire –long before the implementation of new educational reforms. The basic primary sources applied for this study mainly consist of the traveler accounts. Likewise some late nineteenth century annual reports of the American Protestant missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and some nineteenth century periodicals were also resorted to.