Cook, clean and knit

In the morning, she prepares breakfast for the family. Then she takes the young children to school. After that she cleans up the breakfast table, starts cleaning the house and when that’s finished, she knits for a while, till it’s time to start making dinner. Just a small glimpse into the life of a so called ‘ev kizi’, a house girl, a girl that lives with her parents and has no job and doesn’t get any education. The day described came from a house girl who was a candidate in Turkey’s most stupid TV show, ‘Var misin yok musun’ – I’ll write about that show some other time, it really deserves it’s own blog. I was amazed. She was young, I think around 20, and she explained how she spends her days cleaning, cooking and knitting. I was more amazed when I checked how many house girls there are in Turkey: sixty percent of the girls between 15 and 25 are ev kizi. Sixty percent! Of course, everybody chooses his or her own way of life, but I simply can’t believe that 60 percent of Turkey’s young women want nothing else than to cook, clean and knit. And in the meantime wait for a knock on the door from a nice marriage candidate. When he comes, she can easily make the switch from ev kizi to ev kadini, housewife. An “everybody happy” situation? For he individual girls, okay, of course they can find happiness, and I hope they will. But the whole concept of ev kizi, the huge amount of house girls and the fact that it is widely seen as totally normal that so much potential is just cleaning and knitting the time away, I can’t help it, it makes me sad.