Yeliz (Turkish-Dutch, 23) wanted to become a doctor from a young age as she was impressed with the idea of helping sick people. She did her preparatory schooling accordingly to be able to attend medicine faculty. However, later she applied to become a pharmacist upon discussing it with a friend of her parents, a doctor, who argued that being a doctor was too difficult and that being a pharmacist is so much more a proper job for a woman. She said: “He basically asked me, ‘my child, do you want a normal family life’? And I said yes.” Yeliz was easily convinced that doing night shifts and working long hours would conflict with her roles as a wife and mother, saying: “of course you have to consider this as a woman.”
While Yeliz is adamant on the necessity of Turkish-Dutch women to work, she argued for prioritising family life at the expense of a promising career as a doctor. Ewing argues that “people construct a series of self-representations that are based on selected cultural concepts of person and selected ‘chains’ of personal memories. Each self-concept is experienced as whole and continuous, with its own history and memories that emerge in a specific context, to be replaced by another self- representation when the context changes” (Ewing, 1990: 253). In her narrative Yeliz is subsequently weaving together different aspects of her particular subjectivity, articulating different notions and contexts of what it entails to be a Turkish-Dutch woman. What seems to be an eradication of her prior commitment to being a doctor, in effect is a reconsideration of what this entails in another context, namely roles within the household. She then considers the issue of paid work from a different angle, highlighting the importance of complying with one’s roles within the family as wife and mother that seems to significantly structure decisions regarding paid work.
Similarly, Turkish-Dutch Dilan (21, pedagogy) wanted to work as a kindergarten teacher as she perceived this as a job which will enable her to have an easy-going home life, as the hours of work are good in this line of work. However, there was also another incentive:
I want to work, but at the same time I don’t want to be only a career woman. I don’t want my life to revolve around work. I’m also looking forward to being a mother. I want to raise my own children in the best way, teaching them our values, our religion. I thought being an educator would allow me that. The kind of work preferred by Dilan was something conceptualised as the opposite of being a “career-woman” which entailed long working hours and constant prioritisation of work at the expense of one’s children and home life. As the training she receives in child development is primarily planned to be used in raising her own children, this seems to affirm this profession’s association with
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“mothering” (Burgess and Carter, 1992). Moreover, Dilan also emphasized that people within the community “have a lot of respect for you” when they hear you will be a teacher. Being a teacher is a reputable profession and a gender-appropriate job as it takes place in a decent environment and primarily deals with children. In this instance, this profession is perceived as ideal for her not only because of the feminine characteristic of this work but also because it’s sanctioned by the community25 as a wholesome profession. Here, the specific gender conservatism
of the Turkish-Dutch community must be accounted for. According to Cohen, “people construct community symbolically, making it a resource and repository of meaning, and a referent of their identity” (Cohen, 1985: 118). Moreover, the idea of a community is especially prominent when its distinctive collective identity is under threat (ibid). The distinct gendered understandings and sexual mores of the Turkish-Dutch are what is employed as a significant frame of reference to reposition and re-value themselves vis-à-vis the Dutch. The decency of the job, its benefit to the community and its links to the core values of the community establish self-worth in a context where this is being challenged by Dutch society at large.
Gaye (Turkish-Dutch, 23, business studies) studentwas interning in a Turkish- owned company in Utrecht as part of her degree and hoped for a permanent position there. While a few of her peers were applying to well-known corporate firms for internships, Gaye opted for this small company, as she would ideally work in a less demanding and relaxed atmosphere. She was engaged to be married, and had discussed their future with her fiancé. She said:
It will be both of us working, but we agreed that I would have a simpler job because I will take care of the children and run the household. Working is important but certain things have to be prioritised. Family is very important for me. As a woman, I want to make sure everything is fully taken care of in my house. As much as I want to work, my work shouldn’t rule my life in a way that my children and family suffers from it.
The gendered understanding of duties pertaining to the household as a mother and wife are perceived as fundamentally important as Gaye makes a point of noting that her paid work shouldn’t undermine her roles in the family. “A simpler job” is seen as the answer to having a work-life balance as the centrality and sanctity of motherhood, and the notion of keeping her household in order are hierarchically more important than employment.
25 It should also be noted here that when the respondents refer to Turkish-Dutch community in this instance, they exclude some integrated Turks who “don’t live by their religion” (dinini yaşamayan).
Aycan had decided on working part time: “I want children. That is why I might have a part-time job. I have seen many do it, and it is easier. That way you can work; do something meaningful, make some money and you still raise a family.” For a balanced work-life situation Aycan envisioned working part-time as the only one among the interviewed Turkish-Dutch students. Part-time work climate is closely connected to women’s roles as mothers and it is highly integrated in Dutch working culture (Visser, 2002). As part-time work is very popular in the Netherlands it is remarkable that not more Turkish-Dutch students mentioned it. Aycan’s mother also worked: she is a Dutch language teacher for elder immigrants in a local community centre.
As exemplified, the respondents have a high regard for taking care of one’s family and motherhood as much as they value a working life. While they underline that working is crucial, a strong and persistent motherhood discourse accompanies discussions related to work, bringing up the highly gendered role expectations within the household. The legitimacy of the role as a wife and mother therefore might work to undermine more challenging career aspirations. The importance of the motherhood discourse coupled with the notions of gender-appropriate jobs attest to the gender conservatisms of the Turkish-Dutch community.
There are also structural constraints that the Turkish-Dutch encounter within the education system that leads to disadvantages in labour market participation. In the highly stratified education system, Turkish-Dutch women are generally present in large numbers in lower educational tracks, and not in more prestigious institutions such as research universities (Pásztor, 2012), since they are often channeled to the least selective school types early on (Pásztor, 2009). This is because the early tracking Dutch system presents a disadvantage for migrant students whose families lack cultural capital and language skills (Pásztor, 2012: 705), limiting the availability of options for these students.
Teacher prejudices also play a part. Some respondents argued that some of their teachers openly said they shouldn’t aspire to some professions since they will be too difficult for them to achieve. Emel (Turkish-Dutch, 21, PR) said: “Some people, even some of the teachers, they think we will not amount to much. I want to show them that we won’t all be cleaning ladies.” In this system, teachers have a gatekeeper role and their advice matters in how students continue with higher education. Teacher prejudices therefore have a significant effect as sometimes they tend to under-advise Turkish-Dutch girls for the next step in education and invest less in them because they think that they are likely to get married at early ages (Pásztor, 2010). Therefore, it remains hard for these respondents to challenge stereotypes of Muslim women as homemakers and low-level workers, as the very access to more sophisticated careers are already out of their reach. One instance during fieldwork illustrated this fact. As noted earlier, most respondents worked for ethnic organisations for children. These women in higher education often took
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the role of “mentors” for some unrelated children in their communities, and talked to their teachers when the child’s parents could not communicate sufficiently. During our interview Yeliz answered a phone call that she said was important. Later, rolling her eyes she explained that she was trying to get one child into a better position in school, and as she knows the system she was more capable of telling his teacher what they want. Like many others, Yeliz was working as a mediator between the school and the child’s family with a view to obliterate the disadvantage Turkish-Dutch students have.