Unlocking the Doors on the History of Women’s Poverty A Social View of Women’s Poverty in The Second Half of the 18th Century-

Poverty – with reference to the lowest layers of social hierarchies - can be defined as not having sufficient resources and income. In recent years, together with the increase in gender studies, the conceptualization of female poverty, which emphasizes the gender differences in the ways women experience poverty, has started to be used by researchers. This concept differentiates between the poverty experiences of women and those of men, depending on their role and status in society. The main focus of this study is the poverty experiences of women who lived in Diyarbekir in the second half of the 18th century. In the present study, it was observed that the houses in which these women lived were generally dilapidated affairs and their clothing was worn out. It was also observed that these women (with average assets of 51 piastre) constituted the poorest people among society since they experienced poverty more intensely than poor men (average assets of 57.5 piastre). This shows that the phenomenon of “the feminization of poverty”, which signifies that poverty is experienced more in women than in men, also existed in the past