11 December 2018
Rezan Has Museum
The third session of the Cibali Talks was conducted by Dr. Gülhan Balsoy from İstanbul Bilgi University with a title of “Factory Girls: Labor, Gender and Women Workers of the Cibali Tobacco and Cigarette Factory”.
Dr. Balsoy evaluated the production process and the role of the female workers through archival documents and photographs taken by Guillaume Berggren. The history of the factory was discussed through workers’ perspective and with associating the production process, work sharing, time and work discipline, working conditions and professional diseases.
Gülhan Balsoy discussed the meaning of wage labor for women workers who make up almost half of the workforce in the factory. Dr. Balsoy also tried to convey the impressive and long history of the Cibali Factory, which has a capacity of close to 12 tons per day, to make women workers visible in the Ottoman past and to convey them from the eyes of the people who worked here. Dr. Balsoy also tried to make a focus on Ottoman women workers who are somehow invisible mostly within the Ottoman past and while she also tried to explain the impressive and long history of the Cibali Factory with a production capacity of 12 tons per day from the eyes of the people who worked here.
