Changing gendered moral rationalities among Israeli welfare-to-work participants

ABSTRACT

European and North American feminist economists have challenged the assumption that job remunerations can cover single mothers’ breadwinning needs. Notwithstanding the strength of this argument, a less economic argument against welfare-to-work (WTW) policy is that it fails to consider women's community-anchored gendered moral rationalities (GMRs). What previous studies rarely grasped is the opportunity provided by WTW to theorize the conditions under which the ability to negotiate cultural values and beliefs held by communities modify the understanding of opportunities. GMRs, which combine the economic with the cultural, were defined as embedded within communities’ and families’ cultural values, which in their turn, condition the extent to which extended families support mothers. The current study examines stable and changing GMRs of single mothers from diverse ethno-national communities. Our analysis of the interviews of 62 mothers who participated in a specific WTW program in Israel and shouldered the expectation to enter the labor market reveals that, when a program is based on a supportive women's group and provides occupational training opportunities, GMRs can change so that women negotiate their communities traditional constructions of motherhood.

RÉSUMÉ

Les économistes féministes européennes et nord-américaines remettent en cause l’hypothèse selon laquelle le salaire permet de satisfaire les besoins élémentaires des mères célibataires. Nonobstant la force de cet argument, un argument moins économique à l’encontre de la politique d’insertion professionnelle est qu’elle ne considère pas les logiques de morale sexospécifique ancrées dans les communautés des femmes. Un élément rarement saisi par les études précédentes était l’opportunité qu’offre la politique d’insertion professionnelle de conceptualiser l’idée que les conditions de négociation des valeurs et croyances des communautés modifient la compréhension des opportunités. Les logiques de morale sexospécifique, qui comprennent à la fois des aspects économiques et culturels, étaient considérées comme ancrées dans les valeurs culturelles des communautés et des familles. Celles-ci conditionnent, à leur tour, le degré de soutien apporté par les familles étendues aux mères. Cette étude analyse les logiques de morale sexospécifique des mères célibataires de différentes communautés ethno-nationales. Notre analyse des entretiens réalisés auprès de 62 mères ayant participé à un programme d’insertion professionnelle en Israël et ayant l’espoir d’intégrer le marché du travail révèle que, quand un programme repose sur un groupe de femmes solidaires et offre des opportunités de formation professionnelle, les logiques de morale sexospécifique peuvent changer de manière à ce que les femmes puissent négocier les constructions traditionnelles de leurs communautés au sujet de la maternité.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• gendered moral rationalities
• low wage
• single mothers
• welfare-to-work
• welfare policy

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Culture
• logiques de morale sexospécifique
• bas salaire
• mères célibataires
• insertion professionnelle
• politique d’insertion professionnelle

Acknowledgements

We want to express our gratitude to the interviewees, who opened their hearts and emotions to us and allowed us to conduct this study. We would also like to thank our research assistants, particularly for their sensitivity to the interviewees: Rachel Andesawo, Julia Benhaim, Najham Nasrallah, Einav Tsabari, Miri Rom-Shvartzvald and Michal Stein. We are grateful to Helene Hogri, our editor, for her invaluable contribution. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their enlightening comments and suggestions. We want to Acknowledge the research grant from the National Insurance Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Anat Herbst-Debby (Ph.D. Bar-Ilan University, 2007) is a lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Gender Studies program at Bar Ilan University and the Director of the Gender in the Field track in the program. Her work on the topic of welfare policy and single mothers has been published in Journal of Social Policy, Social Policy and Administration and International Journal of Social Welfare and Demographic Research and Population Research and Policy Review. Her other interests include motherhood and welfare policy, family, divorce and inequality.

Orly Benjamin is an Associate Professor at the Sociology and Anthropology department and at the Gender Studies program, Bar-Ilan University. She is the author of two books: Feminism, Family and Identity in Israel: Women's Marital Names was published (2011) introduces her theory on couples' negotiation and the power relations between feminist and familism in Israel. Her second book, Gendering Israel's Outsourcing: The Erasure of Employees' Caring Skills (2016), introduces a feminist perspective on public procurement in welfare, education and healthcare services and elaborate her perspective on precarious employment as a feminist issue. She is currently the chair of the Poverty Research Unit at the social sciences faculty at Bar-Ilan university aiming at developing a data base on resources and barriers to poverty alleviation as well as developing the knowledge on economic violence.