“Successful” identity transformation: the representation of Israeli post-Soviet immigrant women in La’isha

ABSTRACT

This article draws on a special issue of La’isha, Israel’s most popular women’s magazine, to study media representations of post-Soviet women. The March 2020 issue, dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel of the 1990s, focused on 1.5 generation post-Soviet women. Past studies suggest that first-generation post-Soviet women in Israel are represented as morally and socially fragmented. In light of this, we ask whether this special issue suggests a different representation. Our study is based on analysis of the contents and visual images of the special issue, as well as interviews with parties involved in the production of the issue. Our findings reveal four discourses constructing the identity of 1.5 generation post-Soviet women: that is, discourses of nationality, Russianness, becoming an Israeli, and being a successful immigrant woman. Our main argument is that La’isha presents the 1.5 generation post-Soviet woman as the successful image of Western neoliberal feminism while maintaining the traditional discourse of Israeli gender order and ethno-national ethos. We further conclude that the feminist neoliberal discourse in La’isha’s special issue mobilizes the immigrants’ identities, producing a model of the successful immigrant woman.

KEYWORDS:

• 1.5 Generation Post-Soviet Women
• Immigration
• Women’s Magazines
• Media Representation
• Neoliberal Feminism
• Israeli ethno-nationality

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Eliza Frenkel for her constructive and helpful comments and suggestions for this paper. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their attentive read and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Following Julia Lerner’s (2011) conceptualization, we refer to the Russian-speaking immigrants of the 1990s as a post-Soviet ethnic group, though they are not represented as such in the issue itself.

2. Shtutland and Russovsky agreed to appear both by their names and the role they took in the production of the special issue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yulia Shevchenko

Yulia Shevchenko is a doctoral candidate at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Her work focuses on the lived experiences of post-Soviet women in the Israeli Negev region. E-mail: [email protected]

Einat Lachover

Einat Lachover is an associate professor at Sapir Academic College. Her work is dedicated to critical analysis of the encounters between gender and a broad range of media forms and contexts. E-mail: [email protected]