Homefront and Battlefront: The Status of Jewish and Palestinian Women in Israel

Abstract

G ENDER INEQUALITY IS MANIFESTED AT all levels of life in Israel. While most Israeli literature describes the origins of the gender social gap, this paper analyzes the social mechanisms that continue to sustain gender inequality. These mechanisms exist despite the spread of ideology that espouses equality between the genders, despite new legislation to promote such equality, and despite the growing integration of women into the labor force and other public spheres. While many societies tend to blur the boundaries between private and public as a means to eradicate perception about gendered social division, this paper claims that, in Israel, the opposite occurs. Life in the shadow of a protracted Arab-Israeli conflict and constant threat has become a powerful mechanism that reproduces a gendered binary world. In military terms, the social dichotomy is characterized as home front and battle front; in sociological terms, the separation between the family and the military epitomizes the public/private split. In Israel, security, the army, and soldiering dominate the public sphere and are the bastions of male discourse. Family and familism are perceived as the pillars of Israeli communal and private lives and are the women's castle. These basic cultural frames serve as a major mechanism for reproducing the gendered division of labor, and, consequently, gender inequality. They not only locate women in traditional roles, but also dilute protest and temper the rise of a strong feminist movement. I argue that this process occurs in both Jewish Israeli and Palestinian' communities, though in reality it unfolds differently due to their basically different social locations vis-at-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict.