Assoc. Prof. Aslı Bugay Sökmez at Department of Guidance and Psychological Counselling at METU Northern Cyprus Campus carries out academic studies on gender roles and the place of women in society.
Mrs Sökmez, who carried out a project that measured the attitude of young people towards women’s rights and freedoms in previous years, revealed in the present study that university students’ attitudes towards male-female relationships became increasingly egalitarian in the western Turkey, while more traditional and hierarchical in the eastern Turkey. This research found that male students’ attitudes towards women’s rights and freedoms are more traditionalist than that of female students and that university life has a positive effect on the attitude towards women’s rights and freedoms in a more egalitarian manner.
On March 8, International Women’s Day, Assoc. Prof. Asli Bugay Sökmez shared the results of another research project she carried out on students. The research conducted on 680 students showed the role of gender roles in students’ career choice. In the study; according to the 2018 YKS (Higher Education Institutions Exam) results, it was found out that the majority of the students who enrolled in the engineering departments were male, while female students chose the faculties of education at a higher rate than male students based on the distribution of the students who were placed in universities according to gender.
Expressing that men are considered to be tough, rational, non-emotional, and good at mathematics; and women, on the other hand, are considered to be emotional, irrational and fragile in traditional societies and these considerations shape their career preferences since their childhood, Bugay Sökmez emphasized that traditional gender roles may misguide students’ professional preferences. Consequently, it is possible to say that the research has revealed that girls are encouraged to study teaching, while men are encouraged to study engineering by their parents. Assoc. Prof. Asli Bugay Sökmez expressed that women are quite successful in the professions thought to be suitable for men as well as those suitable for women by saying that “The prejudices like “women cannot be engineers”, the most important obstacle to success, will change again through the success and efforts of women. For this, they should not give up their dreams from the very beginning considering them as just difficult or men’s work and without trying them ever. At this point, the attitude and encouragement of families, teachers and society is of great importance”.
