Selma Acuner
Organisation: EWL Coordination for Turkey/Women’s Coalition -Turkey
Country: Turkey
My favorite feminist is: The list will not fit in here
What makes me angry about patriarchy: When they say: But men are also subjected to violence!
My areas of expertise when it comes to VAWG: Namely policy formulation, theory and implementation at the state level as the General Director of the NMW; and as an academic and also as an activist (advocacy, protesting, campaigning). Specifically I focus on Women Peace and Security in my region.
Key issues when it comes to VAWG in your country/organization that the other EWL Observatory experts need to know.
It focuses on forms of multiple discrimination against women and the girl child in conflict areas, and carries out research, projects and campaigns in this line. It tries to set the political agenda on issues of concern to women’s rights and does monitoring accordingly. It is a member of Women and Peace initiatives and carries out work and campaigns on WPS. The coalition also does raising awareness work on sexual violence specifically unde conflict situations.
Explain briefly your daily work as if you were to explain it to a 12 years old: Our daily work is like cooking food. We wake up to cook food altogether everyday. The Turkish cuisine is very colorful, and sometimes very complicated! therefore our work also is. In order to have delicious food for everyone we bring our minds and experiences together and plan every step. All single member has a duty to follow, it is a very cooperative work. We come together in our office to decide what
to cook that day. We first check the needs of the people that we are going to cook for, decide on the ingredients in a very participatory manner and distribute responsibilities. Everybody shoulders a part which helps us to end up with tasty food even when our resources are very limited.
If you could change one thing for women, what would that be: It would be changing the gender division of labour, and as an outcome the distribution of power and wealth would also change.
