Ceren Karlıdağ/ JINHA

IZMIR - The Ödemiş women’s handicrafts bazaar has been carrying on for a century. They are facing industrialization, but they continue resisting.

The Ödemiş women’s handicrafts bazaar is a historical bazaar carrying on for 110 years. Every Saturday, they display needlepoints, lacings and necklace that they made. The women create their own economy thanks to this bazaar. They try to protect the bazaar’s history and their products against shopping centers and industrialization. They do not just attribute material meaning to their products; when someone likes their products, they are extremely gratified.

65-years-old Ayşe Kıymet came to this bazaar when she was a child. Now, she is displaying her products in this bazaar. Ayşe said that she values women’s products produced by their own labor. She mentioned that they tried to become a cooperative, but they could not.

“If women organize there, our labor will be more visible,” Ayşe said. She makes her living by selling table cloths. She is also paying for her children’s educational costs. According to her, the women should be organized to protect their labors against large factories.

Zeynep Tutar has made her living by needlepoint-making with her mother for 15 years.

“My eyes are visual impaired. I use two different pairs of glasses,” she said, talking about their work’s difficulty. She said that the value assigned to the products of hand labor is decreasing day by day. “We cannot get our labor’s worth; we just have pocket money. I’m laboring on these products night after night. Nobody assigns them real value,” she said.

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