Women at the Junction of Contrasts: On the Status of the Palestinian Women in Israel

Mada al-Carmel, The Arab Center for Applied Social Research, hosted a lecture by Dr. Amalia Saar within the seminar series: Gender and Women's Status in the Palestinian Society, on July 28th, 2005. The lecture was entitled "Women at the Junction of Contrasts: On the Status of the Palestinian Women in Israel".

This lecture on Israeli Palestinian women's opinions addresses the question of how to assess this group's complex situation without falling into one-dimensionality. The collective portrait drawn from literature, primarily feminist literature, has a certain degree of imbalance, with some of the studies focusing on the multiplicity of suppressions to which the women are subject, and others celebrating the impressive personal achievements that many women attain despite objective conditions. My argument is that the key to resolving the apparent contradiction between these two lines of analysis can be found in the contrasts and dynamics of the broader social structure in which the Palestinian society lives.

A feminist reading of this structure, utilizing the terms of "gender rule" and "gender order" enables the identification of overlapping fields, and the friction between the various systems in which the women's lives are lived. The gender rule prevailing in the family, in the clan, in the ethnic group, in the national group, and in the state are all patriarchic, although in different ways. The patriarchic language common to these disparate systems reinforces the suppression to which the woman is subject in the various dimensions of her life, in that it imposes cooperation in her own inferiority, and her suppression is symbolically replicated.

By contrast, the competition between the various systems for power and resources places her in a situation of constant friction, which creates opportunities for women to maneuver and derive personal benefit, which are significant, even if limited. Analysis of the broad structural conditions in which gender relationships are created and exist enables economic-political dimensions of suppression and racism to be taken into consideration, without canceling those of the agency and of personal creativity, nor giving them undue weight.