ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of Victorian gender norms, notably the notion of the “New Woman,” the rise of feminist arguments, and the development of gendered citizenship in relation to nationalism in imperial Britain and how it inspired a similar discourse in the Ottoman Empire beginning from the second half of the 19th century to the end of the World War I. In the Victorian imperial ideology, women were responsible for the moral upbringing of their children and for providing a moral haven for their husbands. Women were taken into the center of a discourse that created a gendered representation for the defenders of various political ideologies to offer solutions to the weakening Europe. Women’s status began to be treated as the measure of Empire’s progress and/or backwardness. The government’s major goal in founding these schools was not to train and educate women for the labor market but to make them intellectual and entertaining wives and better mothers.
