THE GENDER STUDIES PROJECT (GSP)
About Us: The Gender Studies Project was initiated by Mada Al-Carmel's Executive Committee while stressing the urgency in establishing a gender project to study the status of Palestinian women in Israel and gender related issues. The Gender Studies Project seeks to support and empower researchers to apply Palestinian, critical, postcolonial and feminist perspectives to the study of Palestinian women’s realities in Israel.
The paucity of critical and Palestinian oriented research on Palestinian women in Israel has weakened the scholastic advocacy program and hindered the ability to construct a politically and contextually sensitive policy. There has been no systematic effort to historicize and engender Palestinian women’s experience in Israel while at the same time recognizing and promoting their agency. Documentation of Palestinian women’s experiences, perspectives and needs are scattered, insufficient and unrecognized. The hegemonic discourse of Zionism has denied their experience as Palestinians and the hegemonic experience of patriarchy has denied their experience as women.
The Gender Research Project hopes to promote gender equality for Palestinian women in Israel and to fill the scholarly void in knowledge about these women's social, cultural, historical, legal, political and economic circumstances. The project aims to cultivate a community of Palestinian academics that will research, train and lecture about gender-sensitive social issues and activities. The Project will, on the one hand, critically examine the Zionist-colonialist role of the Israeli state in order to expose the policies that maintain and perpetuate the subjugation of Palestinian women in Israel. On the other hand, the Palestinian patriarchal ideologies which also sustain women's inferior status will be examined, alongside the ways that these two structures serve to reinforce one another.
Feminist methodologies and critical theories will be employed to advance the personal and political realities of Palestinian women in Israel. This research project aims to make visible the rights, needs and the abilities of women to resist and challenge the hegemonic discourse and policies in Israeli and Palestinian societies, as well as on the regional and international levels. Imperative to this is the creation of cooperative relationships with local, regional and international NGOs and researchers to share ideas on issues such as empowerment, solidarity and community activism. In addition, by disseminating research locally and internationally the Gender Research Project can support the ongoing efforts of political leaders, NGOs, activists, and others who work toward improved policies and equality for Palestinian women in Israel.
Background: Palestinian women and girls account for over half of the Arab population, which comprises approximately 17% of the Israeli population. They are marginalized on three fronts: as women in Arab society, as women in Israeli society, and as Palestinians in Israeli society. As the least educated, least paid, poorest, and least represented in leadership and decision-making positions, Palestinian women are arguably among the weakest segments of Israeli society.
Mada recognized that gender equality is part and parcel of the fight for equality for all of Israel’s Arab citizens, and Mada is committed to improving the status of women by providing new opportunities for women to plan and articulate their own and their community's collective future.
The establishment of the Gender Studies Project was the culmination of Mada's successful gender pilot project, concluded in 2006, which focused on training Palestinian women researchers. The Women Researcher’s Project the first of its kind consisted of:
- a year-long workshop in gender studies that provided academic and financial assistance to 10 Arab women MA and PhD candidates to research and write scholarly papers related to the history and social conditions of Palestinians. Using multiple social science methods including gender analysis, the papers have resulted in the first-ever edited volume by Palestinian women scholars in Israel;
- a two-day gender studies workshop that brought Arab women scholars from Israel together with women scholars from the West Bank and other parts of the world to discuss oral history methodologies; and
- a public seminar on gender studies consisting of 10 monthly lectures by Arab, Israeli, and international scholars running for a year from Summer, 2005. The lectures attracted significant interest and attendees consisted of academics, feminist researchers and community activists. The subject matter of the lectures included: Patriarchal Society and Women; A Complex View of Palestinian Women in Israel; Studying Feminist Issues from the Standpoint of the "Oppressed"; The Weaponization of Palestinian Women's Bodies and Lives: A Feminist Genealogical Analysis; and critical readings of post-colonial feminist texts.