Architecture and the City from Opinions to Comments: ‘If you are a woman you are guarded a lifetime’

The city. I tried to write comments to more than a hundred students’ writings about what they think on ‘women and the city’. In this direction, I tried to classify the students’ thoughts on titles such as: Clichés of gender roles, terminology, normalised roles of womanhood, issues of being a woman, the comparative position of Eskişehir according to other cities in Turkey and even cities in neighbouring countries. I also tried to understand their thoughts on subjects like transgender, boyfriends, love and lovers, traffic, harassment and violence. I tried to problematize the “sexism tradition” at the Architecture Department in the Eskişehir Osmangazi University concerning the misogynist statements of the students. Architecture as a profession, has defined a masculine space of power heretofore. The distribution of the students according to gender can be seen as a sign of structural change. The quantitative dominance of women in departments of architecture threatens the masculine aspects of architectural education, as well as the masculinity of management hierarchy. While masculine design oligarchy is surpassed, sexism-based narratives and explanations are becoming problematic. The only way to uncover the intensive creative potentials present in architectural education is to find new ways to problematize dominant masculinities. I hope this paper will serve to find out new paths to overcome the problem.