Home Sweet Home: Feminist Deconstruction in a Women’s Shelter

This paper is written to narrate, interpret and share our experiences starting from August 2009, at the Women’s Shelter of Çankaya Municipality, Ankara. Our Women’s Shelter shares the aims and the organizational structure of the municipal administration. This connection opens the shelter to the danger of bearing the patriarchal patterns of the organizational structure and the manners of work as well. Despite this structural disadvantages, we have intended to develop a place free from patriarchal violence to work and live. In this paper we intend point our observations considering the various manifestations of patriarchy and the practices within which patriarchy manifests itself as well as the reconstructive work we have been doing and hoping that is gradually becoming a model to free our shelter from these manifestations.