Women, Space and Modernity: A Gendered Reading of <i>Arkitekt</i> in 1931–1950

This article examines the representation of women in Arkitekt , one of the most influential architectural journals of Early Republican Türkiye, between 1931 and 1950. Conceptualizing the journal as a discursive and cultural platform, the study explores how gendered visibility, spatial legitimacy, and professional authority were represented and negotiated within architectural media during the formative decades of Turkish modernity. The selected timeframe begins with the establishment of Arkitekt in 1931 and ends in 1950, when Türkiye transitioned to a multi-party political system, introducing major political and ideological transformations. Grounded in feminist architectural historiography, discourse analysis, and media studies, the research analyzes 136 gender-related references identified within the journal corpus. These references were categorized into seven thematic groups and evaluated through archival interpretation and diagram visualizations. The findings reveal that women were represented predominantly through domesticity, aestheticized femininity, institutional regulation, and gender-segregated technical and spatial practices. Although women became increasingly visible after the granting of women’s political rights in 1934, their professional representation in architecture remained limited and peripheral. The study argues that the Arkitekt archive offers a valuable lens for examining the conditions of visibility, professional legitimacy, and architectural authority in Early Republican Türkiye. The findings reveal a pattern of conditional visibility in which women appeared predominantly within specific spatial, social, and symbolic frameworks. By combining feminist discourse analysis with visual mapping methods, the article contributes to architectural historiography through a gender-focused reading of Turkish architectural media and modernity.