"Palestinian Voices: Feminist Thought As A Tool For Resistance"

First International Conference, June 28-29, 2007

Dr. Hadeel Rizq-Qazzaz

Dr. Hadeel Rizq-Qazzaz Received a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, specializing in women’s and development issues. She has produced numerous studies and research papers relating to issues of human development, the study of poverty and political participation among Palestinian women, and assessing the economic participation of women through a time-use survey. She currently works as Director of Programs at the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, and is active in numerous civil society organizations in the West Bank, including as a member of the Board of Directors of the Ramallah branch of the General Union of Palestinian Women, the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee and Women’s Studies Centre.

The Palestinian Woman between the Millstones: Strategies of Adaptation and Resistance in the Private and Public Spheres

“Poverty has a woman’s face” is a slogan raised in international forums to draw attention to the additional burdens that women bear in the world in general, and in confronting poverty and attempts to become free of it. The burdens of women are compounded in states of natural and humanitarian disasters, and in facing open wars and armed conflicts, where the state of impoverishment becomes permanent and persistent, and in which it is difficult to distinguish between the cause and the result. The conservative and traditional nature of society, which confines women to a restricted sphere, contributes to limiting the choices of women and their opportunities. And who represents the complexities of these interlaced dimensions more than the Palestinian woman, whose basic suffering and society’s state of incessant impoverishment emerged as a result of uprooting and expulsion, the creation of a state of colonial subordination which is difficult to get rid of, and a conservative society that confines women to the role of mother and housewife. The political reality became a series of performances that are difficult to eradicate, and impoverishment resulted. This caused the entrenchment of the ideas of fundamentalist, conservative streams, which reinforce the traditional view of women and confine them to a constricted realm which does not go beyond the private sphere. The prevailing political, economic and cultural complexities are intertwined in the Palestinian reality, making thinking about becoming free of them difficult.

This paper attempts to examine the relationship between the bonds imposed on the Palestinian woman and the internal societal blockade, as opposed to the external blockade of the occupation. The struggle of the Palestinian woman has always been waged on the two fronts of internal emancipation and external liberation. However, not entering into internal battles, such as strengthening the economic participation of women, has negatively affected the possibilities for achievement in the national project as a whole. The second part of the paper focuses on the attempts of the Palestinian woman to adapt and resist, despite the reality of impoverishment and political subordination, and Palestinian society’s treatment of all of these as attempts merely reserve processes that do not reflect in a positive way on the liberation of women, their political status, and their role in decision making. The reason for this is a sharp horizontal division between the elites, who make the decisions, and the “survival” needs of women, their children and society as a whole. Finally, the paper attempts to respond regarding the possibilities of transforming the strategies of adaptation and resistance used by women into an effective force that is based on the real starting point for liberation from all forms of subordination, as opposed to submission to the logic of assistance and foreign aid.