Breastfeeding Privatization in Public Education (eBook)

Dr Meral Apak is a critical education researcher chasing the odds in the 'normal' within the realm of educational life and thought. Her work focuses on gender issues in education in the field of power, empowerment and 'dis'powerment in a sociological sense. Apak has taught at various levels in public and private schools. During and after her Master's degree in Women's Studies, she actively participated in the establishment of women's solidarity organisations and critical education associations. During her doctoral study in the field of Educational Sciences, she contributed to the establishment of BEPAM (Bogazici University, Center for Educational Policy Studies) and led the center from 2013 to 2017. Apak has taught at various universities in Istanbul and in Germany, and continues her research in Berlin.

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This book unveils women's empowerment as mothers as a notion in the school system that reinforces patriarchy rather than weakening it. It discusses how empowerment is a contested notion, even though it is mostly praised in terms of women's emancipation. This book explores the concept that although women are breastfeeding education as mothers in the neoliberal education system, they are not necessarily doing so as a self-sacrifice as one may generalize in the context of neoliberal economy. Instead, this book argues that women are doing this as a means of investment for gaining a sense of individual power, which ironically, reinforces patriarchal values. It presents demonstrative and descriptive practical incidences in the field.