UCLA

Women’s education has been promoted as both a key objective of the global campaign for gender equality and as a sine qua non of long-term sustainable development. In the extant literature, non-formal education has been advanced as a tool for social change and women’s empowerment. Moreover, recent reports published by international development agencies and transnational organizations have highlighted the role of non-governmental organizations in the provision of adult education programs. However, neither the academic literature nor policy reports identify the extent to which the participation of women-led non-governmental organizations has been taking place. This dissertation addresses the gap in both the academic literature and international adult education policy by exploring women-led civil society organizations in Turkey as anOther space for non-formal education programs.

Drawing on two years of fieldwork, including archival research, curricula collection and in-depth interviews with twenty four program coordinators located in women-led civil society organizations throughout Turkey, I argue that women’s knowledges and experiences have been marginalized within an androcentric canon of adult education literature. Women’s diverse experiences of marginalization not only serve as the impetus for developing alternative non-formal education programs in women-led civil society organizations, but also inform the pedagogies practiced within these spaces. In examining these diverse experiences, I highlight the opportunities and challenges inherent in the practice promoting women’s adult education within these spaces. Women participating in this study reflected on the challenges of working with the Turkish government, international donor agencies and gender ‘experts’ from within and outside of Turkey. In particular, women participating in this study argue that these challenges have negatively affected the implementation of programs related to gender-based violence interventions and occupational courses for women. However, participants in this study also offered tangible recommendations to both improve and ensure the long-term sustainability of women’s adult education programs. Participants argue that these recommendations are fundamental to the policy and practice of promoting women’s non-formal education programs in Turkey.