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Palestinian Women in the Israeli Workforce and the Idea of Economic Citizenship

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Palestinian Women in the Israeli Workforce and the Idea of Economic Citizenship A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Sa'ar, Amalya Article Palestinian women in the Israeli workforce and the idea of economic citizenship economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter Provided in Cooperation with: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), Cologne Suggested Citation: Sa'ar, Amalya (2015) : Palestinian women in the Israeli workforce and the idea of economic citizenship, economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter, ISSN 1871-3351, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), Cologne, Vol. 16, Iss. 2, pp. 14-20 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/156050 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Palestinian Women in the Israeli Workforce 14 Palestinian Women in the Israeli Workforce and the Idea of Economic Citizenship By Amalya SaSa’’’’arararar tion of all citizens, irrespective of national, class, or ethnic background, brings economic terminology into a discourse Department of Anthropology (in the making), University of on citizenship whose ideological nucleus is quite differently Haifa, [email protected] oriented. Israel is a multi-cultural, heterogeneous state. Human and This paper looks at the implications for Palestinian-Israeli cultural diversity is an inseparable part of our personal and women of the newly emerging discourse of diversity and professional lives, and a tremendous advantage for the work- the concomitant emergence of the idea of economic citi- force and the economy. Therefore, the Ministry of Economy … zenship – the linking of civil entitlement and civil contribu- operates to create unique training programs for employers who tion to economic productivity. I will argue that the recent want to incorporate diversity and equal opportunities … Most mainstreaming of concerns with the workforce participa- of us know by now the value of a workforce that evaluates tion of Palestinian-Israeli women is a paradoxical effect of workers according to their skills and capacities, rather than the neoliberal turn, as the idea that the market is the best their culture, religion, or nationality. There is a clear economic mediator of morality, social justice, and identity infiltrates advantage in making work places diverse … I have no doubt the hegemonic ethno-national-cum-patriarchal logic of that the profitability of gender diversity is true to every popu- belonging. The state, which now officially endorses the lation that is presently excluded from the workforce. Such promotion of Arab women’s labor force participation, aims exclusion is illegal and unprofitable. It hurts the economy, the to do so by encouraging private employers to hire them. At society, and the [excluded] population itself – and in that case the same time, it is directly involved in at least two devel- we all lose … If we can create a substantive change in the opments – reducing the public sector and promoting laws workforce regarding excluded populations, for example the that restrict the rights of the Palestinian citizens – which promotion and integration of Arab women, whose labor force are straightforwardly counter-effective. Thus the sudden participation is only 22%, and who work for a minimum wage official interest in the economic wellbeing of Arab women even when they have academic degrees … we will all become does not overturn the long-standing exclusion of the Pales- winners. This is to all of us, as a society and as individuals; tinian citizens. That remains as solid and consistent as each person who remains outside the workforce is costing us before, but is repackaged in a rhetoric of inclusion through more. It is our collective interest to integrate all the popula- economic participation. Palestinian women, whose vulner- tions into the workforce. ( Naftaly Bennet, Minister of the ability under Arab patriarchy is conveniently used to deny Economy , The Marker 22.10.2013) their vulnerability under Israeli ethno-nationalism, serve this particularly well. The effort to modernize them through The idea that diversity is good for the economy has be- integrating them into the workforce appears the easiest come very popular in Israel over the past decade or so and way to create de-politicized Palestinian citizens, eager to women – particularly minority women – feature as its most assimilate into Israeli society by sharing the language of likely embodiments. This concept, which has migrated to economic rationality and profit maximization, while leaving Israel from Western capitalistic societies, appears at odds intact the ethnic structure that continues to block their full with the local public atmosphere of heightened ethno- membership in the polity. nationalism and the recent deluge of legal and administra- tive activity that aims to curb the rights of the Palestinian The Idea of Economic Citizenship and citizens and non-Jewish migrants. Nevertheless, these two the Diversity Paradox trends co-occur on the ground, collapsing together im- ported ideas of utilitarian individualism and local traditions Economic citizenship (for example, Kessler-Harris 2003; of primordial collectivism. Among other things, diversity Moghadam 2011), the idea that economic self-sufficiency introduces a new twist to local ideas of civil entitlement. is an important means and measure of civil entitlement, The new focus on self-sufficiency as a right and an obliga- has come into use in different ideological circles simulta- economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter Volume 16, Number 2 (March 2015) Palestinian Women in the Israeli Workforce 15 neously and has subsequently assumed diverse and even The Labor Force Participation of contradictory meanings. While neo-conservatives frame Palestinian Women Citizens of the State economic self-sufficiency as a pre-condition for civil enti- tlement, radical feminists perceive gainful employment as a Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are estimated to num- basic human right, and business philanthropists use it to ber about 1,450,000, or 20 percent of the total popula- mean commitment to social solidarity across economic tion. This group includes several religious categories: Mus- sectors. lims (82 percent), Christians (10 percent), and Druzes (8 percent), and further sub-cultural categories (fellahi, ur- Unlike places like the United States, where an economic ban, and Bedouins), who nevertheless share important perspective on citizenship makes cultural and historical characteristics, most notably language and national identi- sense, in Israel such a perspective merits some attention, fication. As citizens they are entitled to some important considering the centrality of primordial, collective affilia- measures of state protection, social benefits, and civil tions in local platforms of citizenship. In Israel, until recent- rights, yet they suffer from multiple forms of discrimination ly, economic productivity has played almost no role in local and marginalization (Kretzmer 1987; Ghanem 2001). They mythologies of contribution. Instead, the most important also fare consistently poorly on health, economic wellbe- determinant of Israeli citizenship has been national belong- ing, educational attainments, poverty rates and other social ing, followed by contribution to the Jewish collective (Peled indicators (Gharrah 2011). 2008). This principle sets very clear limits to the entitle- ments of Palestinians living inside the Green Line, who The Palestinian regions inside Israel are grossly underdevel- were granted formal citizenship and a range of individual oped compared with Jewish populated regions. Massive rights – the Israeli constitution includes a combination of confiscation of lands following the establishment of the republican and liberal principles – but whose exclusion state in 1948 changed the Palestinians who remained from from the national collective has denied them access to subsistence agriculturalists to proletarians (Rosenfeld collective rights as basic as land, water, or environmental 1978). The ethnically-split character of the national econ- development, and has long subjected them to discrimina- omy then blocked the full integration of those who be- tion. Still, over the past decade or so, the logic of econom- came citizens into the Jewish-dominated workforce and ic self-sufficiency and the idea that the economic benefits channeled the bulk of employment opportunities to the of diversity may suspend
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