Hareem or Haraam? Clamps of Women’s Spatial Freedom

This study aims to understand the intersectionality of multidimensional components that construct gender-based spatial boundaries. In this study, the intersectionality of society, body, space and time is examined in the example of one women-only cafe in Balıkesir. The study is a qualitative study and focus group discussion, based on a semi structured interview form, was conducted. Focus group discussion conducted by researcher/author with three women who the first owner of the Cafe (W1), her female friend who helped her during the opening process of the cafe (W2), and the current owner who turned the cafe into a business for henna night organizations (W3). The interview was audiorecorded, then transcribed, and analyzed with critical discourse analysis. The Café is a cafe special for women. W1 claimed that she aimed to encourage the use of public spaces for women with this cafe. Even this attempt, which encourages women to be in the public space with such a distinction, encountered male barriers. These experiences show that the freedom of the female body is almost under the grip like crab clamps. But the spatial arrangements aimed at keeping men and women
separately in the public sphere are an ideological production that maintains the intimate construction of the female body and further reproduces it by strengthening. However urban space is not independent of the actions of individuals that use the city. In the example of this study, the citizens of the city did not prefer the use of women-only cafe and rejected the conservative formation of urban identity.