Masculine Presentation of Women's Entrepreneurship

Introduction

For a long period of history, women have been excluded from the spheres of business and money management. The women who have gained this chance at governance are women who fit the qualities of masculine power. Women such as Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, and Elizabeth I, queen of England, perpetuate male hegemony (Essex, 2022; Ehrenreich, 2010). Such women are symbols of dominant forms of masculinity. They have more power than men outside of dominant masculinity (Millet, 2016). We characterize this power as “male”. Because masculinity is not a phenomenon related to the biological penis. Masculinity is about possessing certain qualities of power. All genders that possess these qualities are masculine. In this sense, women entrepreneurs are masculinized and therefore transformed into “strong” and entrepreneurial beings desired by capitalist power.

Intelligence and entrepreneurship are two of the most important phenomena of modern times. The concept that makes a person in harmony with the environment and himself/herself is not intelligence but emotion. Emotional empathy is the real power of man (Zerzan, 2004). Civilization has glorified intelligence today more than ever before. Qualities such as entrepreneurship, strength, courage, speed and practicality have become important intelligence indicators. Power has always been associated with masculine qualities, and the person who has power, regardless of gender, is male, sick and harmful to the world (Solanas, 2019).

In this study, ideas will be generated through the presentation of the female entrepreneur. It will be shown how women's entrepreneurship is constructed in the news, one of the narrative genres of modernism. Turkey is one of the first countries where women's rights were recognized. In 1930, women were elected to municipalities and in 1934 they participated in parliamentary elections. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, attached great importance to the equality of men and women, even though he could be criticized on some points. In order to establish a modernist Turkey, he controlled the party he founded. He made room for women in his party under his control, supported the equality of women and men in social environments, and granted women various rights. However, Islamist and right-wing conservative governments have changed this over time, especially after his death. Many gains have been lost by the AKP government in the last two decades. Unfortunately, due to the reproduction of the male-dominated social structure, especially with the AKP government, Turkey provides good examples of the masculine presentation of the female entrepreneur.