Women in Israel

Race, Gender and Citizenship

Nahla Abdo

Women in Israel provides a fresh, gendered analysis of citizenship in Israel. Working from a framework of Israel as a settler-colonial regime, this important, insightful book presents historical and contemporary comparative approaches to the lives and experiences of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Palestinian Arab women citizens. Nahla Abdo shows that no solution to the problems of the region can be found without changing existing racial and gender boundaries to citizenship.

     ‘Nahla Abdo’s book ‘Women In Israel’ critically reviews women in Israel, their differential social positioning and citizenship in the inclusive way it should be done and too often is not done, focusing on Palestinian, Mizrahi as well as the Ashkenazi women within a structural as well as a historical analysis of Israel as a colonial setler state. Rather than viewing the differential positionings of these women through the lense of cultural relativism the book emphasises the exclusionary and inferiorizing processes of racialization that constitute historically these positionings, focusing mainly on the arenas of the labour market and education.’–Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London

     ‘Nahla Abdo’s path breaking book systematically demonstrates how Zionist settler colonialism has created differentiated and unequal citizenship between Israeli Jews and Palestinians and between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. Her political economy approach breathes new life into gender and citizenship debates in the Middle East.’–Nicola Pratt, Author of ‘Women and War in the Middle East’

Contents

Introduction
1. Women, State and Citizenship: The Israeli Context
2. Women in Israel/Palestine: The Relevance of History
3. Women and the Economy
4. Women, Education and Human Capital
Conclusion

About the Author

Nahla Abdo (Ph.D.) is an Arab feminist activist, Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She has extensive publications on women, racism, nationalism and the State in the Middle East with special focus on Palestinian women