Producing Onscreen Women: Empowerment and Regulation Under Patriarchy

Objective

While most research on gender and streaming focuses on Anglo-American contexts and major multinational platforms such as Netflix and Amazon, this project shifts the frame to Turkey, examining two eras: the early 2000s broadcast television period and the post-2019 streaming landscape shaped by intensified state oversight. The global success of Turkish serialized melodramas (dizis) rests on contested representations of gender shaped by market forces, state regulation, and the secular–Islamic divide. Although patriarchal norms dominate under an increasingly authoritarian, populist government, urban, Western-oriented women remain central to narratives and production. The post-2016 rise of digital platforms initially promised greater freedom, but a 2019 law extended state censorship to streaming, curtailing portrayals of non-patriarchal and non-heteronormative characters. Against this backdrop, the project asks: (1) how female creatives craft strong women when empowerment appears as antagonistic to the state; (2) how creative strategies differ across broadcast and streaming contexts; and (3) how portrayals of gender and practices of creative labor jointly reproduce or contest dominant ideologies. Using participant observation, digital ethnography, life story interviews, and textual analysis, the project develops a multi-layered account of continuities and ruptures in creative practice across shifting political regimes. By centering the experiences of Turkish female creatives, it challenges Western-centric assumptions that digital media is inherently liberating for women or that streaming operates in stable democracies. Moving beyond the binary of Western media research and decolonial critique, the Turkish case instead highlights a shared global condition: the rise of right-wing populism. Situating Turkish women’s creative practices within this context, the project shows how gendered cultural production both reflects and challenges contemporary political pressures.