Intersections in Palestinian single mothers’ lives in Israel

Abstract

The present article addresses the support and supervisional relations of Palestinian Israeli single mothers vis-à-vis their families and communities. It links the theoretical discussion on intersectional analysis with power relations and gender. In this article I focus on the importance of employing analytical models that take into consideration the internal variance within this social category of ‘Palestinian Israeli single mothers' which emerge due to the contradictory social trends typifying Palestinian society in Israel today – models that examine the implications of the complexity of women's lives in discrete locations, the changes society is undergoing, together with processes of discrimination and the strengthening of conservative trends. The article is based on data gathered during in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted and analyzed with a commitment to the principles of feminist research.

Keywords:

• Palestinian Israeli women
• single mothers
• intersectional analysis
• social policies
• Muslim women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Thirteen percent of Jewish families with children in Israel are headed by a single parent (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2014). The study excludes Israeli army widows, and women who chose to have a child out of wedlock, who in most cases live in mixed cities, try to assimilate, and are regarded as being on the margins of Palestinian society.

2. The population of this study is Palestinian-Israeli, also referred to in other studies as Arab Israelis, Arab citizens of Israel, the Arab minority, etc. My choice of the term ‘Palestinian-Israeli’ is not merely semantics but, as argued by Rabinowitz (1993), also related to the politics of designation. The topic of labelling, he claims, is a key component in the study of minority groups, as it shapes group boundaries, and the assigned label reflects the agenda of the dominant forces in society. Over the last ten years, most Palestinians in Israel have addressed their identity questions in different ways, whether as citizens (Israelis) or nationals (Palestinians) (Rabinowitz & Abu-Baker, 2002; Smooha, 2001). As Sa'ar (2007) says, this designation reflects the dual components of their inclusion and exclusion with respect to the state. Similar processes occur in other countries where minorities develop a complex “hyphenated” identity, combining new and old elements.

3. Despite the fact that the differentiation between Christian and Muslim women, as manifested in the statistical data in various fields, was also validated in my study, the strength of the intersectional analysis conducted for this study leans heavily on the combination and intersection of the diverse sociological variables examined. Thus, any attempt to extract this religious affiliation and render it a decisive variable, may reduce the complexity of the analysis. In this context, I would also like to add that the intersectional analysis also enables better examination of both the religious cultural-ideological contexts and the structural, economic and political ones. This study has both Muslim and Christian women as its subjects, and therefore, can we examine the significance of the difference between them? Is there only a difference of religion, or are the distinctions also connected with area of residence, urbanism, education, employment, secularism, and proximity to, and involvement with, the Jewish population?

4. In 2013, the Palestinian minority in Israel numbered 1,658,000–20.7% of Israel's population (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2013).

5. The percentage of employed Israeli-Palestinian women is 20.5% of all women of working age, in comparison with the ratio of Jewish women's participation in the Israeli labor force, currently 55.5% (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2012).