Women President For Turkey’s Education Union

New administration was elected at the 3^rd Ordinary General Meeting of Turkey’s Education and Science Workers Union (Eğitim-Sen) this weekend. Zübeyde Kılıç Öztürk, Mehmet Bozgeyik, Serpil Açıl Özer, Mehmet Toğan, Mustafa Ecevit, Gülçin İspert, Sayım Gültekin were elected. There are three women and four men in the newly elected seven person administration.

According to the information Bianet received from the headquarters of Eğitim-Sen, the distribution of duties have not been completed yet, it is not known who will take over which secretariat. Despite this, today many newspapers came out with the headline that Zübeyde Kılıç Öztürk was the new head of Eğitim-Sen.

Following are the votes the members of the newly elected administration received:

The female members: Zübeyde Kılıç Öztürk (266 votes), Serpil Açık Özer (258 votes), Gülçin İspert (281 votes)

The male members: Mehmet Bozgeyik (261 votes), Mustafa Ecevit (263 votes), and Sayım Gültekin (262 votes).

Women representation in the unions

There are very few women administrators, almost none, in the unions in Turkey. There are no women in the administrations of the Revolutionary Confederation of Labor Unions (DİSK), the Confederation of Turkish Just Workers’ Unions (Hak-İş) and the Confederation of Labor Unions of Turkey (TÜRK-İŞ).

While there are 93 male administrators in the 96 trade unions attached to the confederations, there are only three female presidents: Didem Aydemir of Bank-Sen (Banking) attached to DİSK, Arzu Çerkezoğlu of Dev-Sağlık-İş (Health) and Vicdan Baykara of Tüm Bel-Sen (Public Service) attached to the Confederation of Public Employees Trade Unions (KESK). (NZ/GG/TB)