Remember your place girls (and don't forget your scarves)
From "The Gulen Movement: Building Social Cohesion through Dialog and Education," the published 2008 PhD dissertation of Gurkan Celik at Tilburg University in the Netherlands .
"Thirdly, with respect to gender equality, one can claim that there is a gap between what Gülen teaches and how his movement participants adapt and behave. The mobility of females in the movement is another discussion point. As some argue, female participants have a very restricted mobility in the Gulen movement and display very limited upward mobility within its core institutions in the field of education and media (Baskun 2005:858; Yavuz 1999:125). Surprisingly, little is known of the factors explaining the participation of women at the lower strata of the movement. Based on my observation, I can say that women's practical position in the society and the movement's conservative participants can form an obstacle for the female participants to move up to a position at the upper levels. There are only a few females in managerial positions of the movement's media outlets or its schools."
(Gurkan Celik was the president of the Cosmicus Foundation, a Gülen organization that founded schools in the Netherlands .)
From the article “The Fethullah Gülen community: Contribution or barrier to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey ?” by Filiz Baskan (Middle Eastern Studies, 41: 6, 849-861, 2005):
"First of all, the Fethullah Gülen Community is organized hierarchically: the hierarchical order extends from the top to the bottom through an increasing number of abiler (elder brothers)’. (…..) Furthermore, this ranking system which assigns a special role to abiler creates a problem with respect to gender equality. This special role of abiler reveals that female followers of the community are not allowed to have a position at the upper levels of the community. Another example of the community’s practice based on gender segregation is related to the composition of schools. There are few schools accepting both boys and girls together; 95 per cent of the schools are only for boys."
"Thirdly, with respect to gender equality, one can claim that there is a gap between what Gülen teaches and how his movement participants adapt and behave. The mobility of females in the movement is another discussion point. As some argue, female participants have a very restricted mobility in the Gulen movement and display very limited upward mobility within its core institutions in the field of education and media (Baskun 2005:858; Yavuz 1999:125). Surprisingly, little is known of the factors explaining the participation of women at the lower strata of the movement. Based on my observation, I can say that women's practical position in the society and the movement's conservative participants can form an obstacle for the female participants to move up to a position at the upper levels. There are only a few females in managerial positions of the movement's media outlets or its schools."
(Gurkan Celik was the president of the Cosmicus Foundation, a Gülen organization that founded schools in the Netherlands .)
From the article “The Fethullah Gülen community: Contribution or barrier to the consolidation of democracy in Turkey ?” by Filiz Baskan (Middle Eastern Studies, 41: 6, 849-861, 2005):
"First of all, the Fethullah Gülen Community is organized hierarchically: the hierarchical order extends from the top to the bottom through an increasing number of abiler (elder brothers)’. (…..) Furthermore, this ranking system which assigns a special role to abiler creates a problem with respect to gender equality. This special role of abiler reveals that female followers of the community are not allowed to have a position at the upper levels of the community. Another example of the community’s practice based on gender segregation is related to the composition of schools. There are few schools accepting both boys and girls together; 95 per cent of the schools are only for boys."
