İzmir Municipality displays gender awareness caricatures on buses

Aegean İzmir Municipality covered buses in caricatures that ranked among the top 100 in an international competition the city held about "women's rights and empowerment." The winning caricature displayed a clock whose hands were the shape of the male and female signs, with the latter sitting broken on the ground and the male hand dictating the time. 

Duvar English

Turkey's İzmir Municipality covered city buses with caricatures about gender stereotypes that are harmful to women, works that ranked successfully in a recent international competition held in the Aegean province to raise awareness about "women's rights and empowerment." 

Receiving the participation of 549 artists from 62 different countries, İzmir's Gender Equality International Caricature Competition was won by Azerbaijan national Seyran Caferli.

Caferli's caricature displayed a clock whose hands were the shape of the male and female signs, with the latter sitting broken on the ground and the male hand dictating the time. 

The second place winner, Swiss national Ernst Mattiello, drew a male and female presenting couple holding their hands out to each other, and a set of sheet music stretched out between their arms.

Halit Kurtulmuş Aytoslu from Turkey won third place in the competition with a drawing that showed a woman holding her arm out, and a series of people from different demographics holding onto her as if she was a safety bar on a bus or subway.

Allocated a women-friendly city in 2010 by the United Nations, İzmir Municipality aims to raise awareness about women's rights through the display of caricatures on city buses.

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has fallen short on sanctioning women's rights since coming into power, most recently debating withdrawing from Istanbul Convention, an international document that protects women and children in signatory countries.