| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the empowerment struggles of female shopkeepers in a district in Istanbul, focusing upon the creation of autonomous women’s space, the construction of entrepreneurial/occupational identity, and the concomitant strengthening of female bonds, particularly those between mothers and daughters. I argue that understanding women’s solidarity is essential for any assessment about how the hegemonic gender codes are reproduced, reconfigured, or challenged in the world of independent female small business owners. Even though the women in the study do not explicitly oppose the dominant gender discourse, their position-takings are often the key in setting the trajectory of the power struggles around the small business. Women’s empowerment in this context is a difficult, open-ended process whose outcome is dependent upon how they tackle with the ambivalent, often negative reactions of their male life partners as well as maintaining their commitment to their enterprising endeavor and to their ties with other women.
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