Empowering refugee and local women through social cooperatives: an unfinished success story in Southern Türkiye
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand the social cooperative model's empowerment and social cohesion impacts based on the case of a cooperative with the partnership of local and refugee women in southern Türkiye to give evidence for the potential and challenges of women cooperatives.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted surveys and focus group interviews with both members and board members. The authors grounded the findings in dimensions extracted from literature on the impact of cooperatives on their members and the wider community.
Findings
The social cooperative economically empowers women through employment and income generation, and skill training while enhancing them socially with increased decision-making power, autonomy, self-esteem and respect. It fosters social cohesion between local and refugee members by building trust and peace, solidarity, knowledge sharing and collective action. However, the cooperative faces challenges in managing sustainable business models, and cooperative membership does not ensure a steady income, social security, economic independence or a fairer division of domestic work.
Research limitations/implications
The challenges and limited outcomes of social cooperatives are primarily due to resource scarcity. Hence, these needs must be considered by policymakers and sponsors of women empowerment programmes so that they can offer response actions to empower social women cooperatives. During the research period, the COVID-19 pandemic posed a significant threat to the survival of the cooperative. Moreover, the restrictions imposed by the pandemic made it impossible to engage Syrian women in focus group discussions. Consequently, the focus group interactions were limited to two Palestinian members, while Syrian members were included in survey interviews.
Originality/value
This study is one of the few attempts to examine the social cooperative model’s impact on women’s empowerment and social cohesion in the context of a mixed membership of local and refugee women in Türkiye. Fieldwork evidence on cooperatives that improve gender equality and inclusive growth can contribute to the advocacy of support for women’s cooperatives in the context of refugees.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely thank the AHENK cooperative (Ahenk Coop) members and managers who participated in this case study. Their valuable insights, openness and cooperation shed light on the topic and enrich this research. The authors gratefully acknowledge the exceptional support of the Ahenk Coop and International Development Management (IDEMA) for providing the consent, necessary contacts and resources that facilitated the completion of this case. This study is a product of the R&D Project ID 63857 STB by the sponsorship of Needs Map Social Cooperative (İhtiyaç Haritası Yardımlaşma Fikri Mülkiyet Hakları ve Proje Danışmanlığı Kooperatifi) and hosted by ITUNOVA TTO A. Ş. (Istanbul Technical University Technology Transfer Office) in 2020. The authors thank all the organizations for their collaboration and support.
Citation
Gultekin, D., Yildirim, N. and Ozturk-Kilic, S. (2024), "Empowering refugee and local women through social cooperatives: an unfinished success story in Southern Türkiye", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-03-2024-0035
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited