Abstract:

Increasing violence against women became an important subject of debate in Turkey nowadays. One major problem is how to overcome inequity for women and improve their social status. Approaches have mostly focused on women in the private sphere, domestic life, but inequity and oppressions that they have to confront in open public spaces are neglected. This situation has made open spaces restricted for access and use for women in Turkey, and they do not have the same amount of freedom as men. It is not only the duty of the law and social organizations but also the duty of landscape architects to find the reasons for these issues and develop solutions to make public spaces more accessible and usable for women and make them feel freer there; landscape architects share important responsibilities. Therefore, it is important for landscape architects to know gender roles and their impact on life in open public spaces. This study aims to reveal the differences that women display in using urban open spaces from men and to approach from a different point of view to the debates about woman-man inequity. Therefore, gender differences in spatial use and activity types were considered and the results were accepted as the reflections of inequity and adverse attitudes that women face. In this research behavior observation and questionnaire techniques were used in the selected study area which is a pedestrian mall located in Trabzon city centre. The results revealed that women do not feel as free as men, woman users are fewer and visit the area less frequently than men and they are more selective in terms of with whom they are coming with.

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