“Why should we be incapable or inefficient?” asked my aunt, “and why should the seclusion of Turkish women in past generations influence or interfere with the organizing, administrative or productive capacities of the Turkish women of this generation? After all women do not belong to a different race than men, we are the daughters of men and inherit their qualities--or their faults--their capacities or their inefficiency, just as much as their sons do. This present generation, without distinction of sex, has inherited the accumulated qualities or faults of all past generations. It is not the sex which makes or mars the individual, which makes or mars his or her talents. Individual talents, qualities or faults are of course inherited to a great degree, but they don't descend exclusively from women to women and from men to men. Furthermore they are especially enhanced by the education, upbringing and training of the individual and I consider that the Turkish women of this generation have had individually a better opportunity than their brothers--or even than their western sisters--to prepare, educate and train themselves for the work they are now doing. The Turkish men of this generation have had to struggle for life as soon as they were out of boyhood and, confronted by the necessity of earning their immediate living, they did not have the opportunity of preparing themselves for the lines of activity best suited to their individual talents--or else and still worse, they have been drafted into the armies and have fought consecutively for the last fifteen years. Thousands have perished in these wars, thousands and thousands have been maimed or otherwise incapacitated for life. As for western women, those of the higher classes--therefore those who have received a better education--are caught in a whirlwind of social amusement as soon as they are little more than children and the greatest majority keep throughout their lives the earmark of the influence that society has impressed on them in their early youth. It is therefore only western women who start life with the handicap of a lesser education who, through hard work and perseverance, are generally the women who accomplish things in the Western world. This is not the case with the Turkish women of this generation. They have had an opportunity to study and prepare thoroughly until they had reached maturity. They had no social life to interfere with their studies. It is true that they did not prepare to enter personally the different fields of activity as they did not expect that their full emancipation would come so soon. But they were conscious of being the mothers of the coming generation, and to prepare their sons and daughters for their task, they equipped themselves with all the knowledge they desired to impart and they had plenty of leisure to do this. That is why you see now so many Turkish women efficient in the activities they have deliberately shouldered.”