Turkey | Founded in 1998 | Thousand Currents Partner since 2024
World March of Women Association (WMW Turkey)
A feminist collective advancing equality, self-determination, and cooperatives
World March of Women International (WMW) is a feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist international movement comprising of grassroots women’s groups dedicated to promoting equality for women and non-binary individuals. A subset of and one of Asia’s leading national coordinating bodies within the International group, WMW Turkey is an autonomous feminist collective working to address gender inequality and discrimination through resistance against extractivism and neoliberal economic practices. WMW Turkey is currently serving as the host for the international secretariat of WMW, a rotating role that changes every seven years through a member vote during the WMW General Assembly.
WMW Turkey’s work streams are:
- Campaign and action: WMW Turkey mobilizes feminists and allies through rallies, demonstrations and coordinated online campaigns to combat economic injustice, authoritarianism and discrimination against women. Their primary campaign centers around the International Day of Women’s Struggle on March 8th.
- Feminist economic alternatives: WMW Turkey combats the neoliberal cooptation of women’s cooperatives in the country by actively supporting the establishment of feminist cooperatives in Turkey and neighboring countries. Their objective is to instill and uphold feminist principles within these cooperatives by reinstating the social mobilization function and solidarity economy principles of cooperatives.
- Popular education: In their efforts to resist extractivism, WMW Turkey conducts popular education programs with various social movements on many issues like feminist cooperatives, food sovereignty, and energy democracy.
WMW Turkey has successfully mobilized thousands of grassroots women annually on March 8th for the International Day of Women’s Struggle. In addition, the group coordinated numerous feminist resistance movements against extractivism in Turkey, notably the defense of the Akbelen Forest against deforestation.