Seasonal Local Female Workers in Hazelnut Agriculture: The Case of Fatsa

The main purpose of this study is to make visible the female labor used in the production of hazelnuts which is important agricultural product for Turkey. Especially, women living in rural areas constitute the most disadvantageous in terms of the problems encountered. The invisibility of women's labor in rural areas emerges as informal and precarious and the vast majority of the work done with depreciation seen as an extension of domestic works. On the other hand, when the related literature is examined, even though many studies are carried out regarding the working and living conditions of women, the studies conducted with the women working in the agricultural sector are limited. Although these studies deal with the issue of labor in hazelnut farming with different dimensions, the women’s labor and gender perspective has not been mentioned very much. In this context, our study has been carried out on local and seasonal agricultural female workers who are generally ignored in the literature. In this context, in the two different villages of Fatsa District of Ordu, detailed interviews were conducted within the framework of semi-structured questionnaires with neutrally selected 20 women., In the interviews, sociological characteristics of women, ownership structure, working and living conditions, gender relations and future fictions of women have been asked.