Women in the Ottoman Empire

In the Ottoman Empire, women enjoyed a diverse range of rights and were limited in diverse ways depending on the time period, as well as their religion and class. The empire, first as a Turkoman beylik, and then a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire, was ruled in accordance to the qanun, the semi-secular body of law enacted by Ottoman sultans. Furthermore, the relevant religious scriptures of its many confessional communities played a major role in the legal system, for the majority of Ottoman women, these were the Quran and Hadith as interpreted by Islamic jurists, often termed sharia. Most Ottoman women were permitted to participate in the legal system, purchase and sell property, inherit and bequeath wealth, and participate in other financial activities, rights which were unusual in the rest of Europe until the 19th century.

Women's social life was often one of relative seclusion. The extent of seclusion changed, sometimes drastically, depending on class. Urban women lived in some amount of sex segregation during most of the empire's history, as many social gatherings were segregated, and many upper-class urban women veiled in public areas; rural women, on the other hand, often did not have the same restrictions placed on them. Veiling and sex segregation customs were therefore seen as a sign of status, privilege and class until Westernization; afterwards, it was seen as a sign of Ottoman and Islamic values.^[1]

The Sultanate of Women, an era that dates back to the 1520s, was a period during which high-ranking women wielded considerable political power and public importance through their engagement in domestic politics, foreign negotiations, and regency. Valide sultans, mothers of the sultan, gained considerable influence through harem politics. Some of the most influential valide sultans were Nurbanu Sultan, Safiye Sultan, Handan Sultan, Halime Sultan, Kösem Sultan and Turhan Sultan.

Later periods saw serious political and religious opposition to further expansion of women's rights, until clear developments in women's rights in Europe and North America started to influence the Ottomans. The Tanzimat reforms of the nineteenth century created additional rights for women, in line with these developments. These reforms were far-reaching particularly in the field of education, with the first schools for girls starting in 1858. However, the curriculum of these schools were largely focused on teaching women to become wives and mothers, and structural reform, such as universal suffrage, would only take place in the early years of the Turkish Republic, the empire's successor state.