Muslim Women's Life Stories

Muslim Women’s Life Stories: Building Leadership

RACHEL HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

TAMAR SHAPIRA

University of Haifa

This two-year ethnographic study examines the life stories of Muslim women holding mid-and high-level leadership positions in Israeli-Arab segregated schools. The women emergedfrom their gendered and ethnic/nationality oppression as pathfinders with strong ambitions tofurther their education and careers. Using strategies that entailed the support of male familymembers, they pushed culturally acceptable boundaries without creating destructive conflicts.This study informs educational anthropological research on women’s self-empowerment andsocial change in “traditional” societies. [Muslim women, school leadership, minority ed-ucation, social change]

Sociocultural anthropology has long been concerned with the dynamics of change inso-called traditional societies. This article examines the gendered aspects of changewithin Israeli Arab society, analyzing the life stories of six women originally studiedby Shapira (1999). The women came from traditional, male-dominant Muslim fami-lies living in villages or small cities in Israel as members of a national and politicalminority. They varied in age and socioeconomic and marital status, yet all were mo-tivated to fulfill their educational and career aspirations. Negotiating cultural con-straints, they assumed important leadership roles in their communities.

We begin with a discussion of the segregated Arab educational system inIsrael, highlighting historical and recent educational trends. We then discusswomen’s status in Arab society and Israel in particular, noting that teaching is aprimary route for women’s professional growth. Next we discuss life history interms of a collective case study methodology and the women’s biographical pro-files, relating their biographies to educational-anthropological theories of changein traditional societies. <Au: 1>We then examine women’s higher education as aspringboard for change through modeling and caring in the context of the fam-ily, school, and community. Finally, we propose thematic interpretations of thestrategies the women used to advance themselves professionally and to promotechanges within their society that will afford greater opportunities for women inpositions of leadership.

Arab Education in Israel

In his book Education, Empowerment and Control: The Case of Arabs in Israel, Al-Haj(1995) describes the historical developments behind the evolution of Arab educationfrom a selective and an elitist system under Ottoman and British rule in Palestineinto a completely segregated system serving all Arab citizens following the estab-lishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Although the Arab educational system is fullysegregated, and Jews and Arabs do not meet in schools, Arab students are subject toIsraeli education laws. These include the 1949 compulsory education law, the 1953state education law, and the 1978 free-of-charge compulsory secondary educationlaw. These laws contributed to a dramatic increase in the level of education withinthe Arab sector. As one index of this, the high school graduation rate among Arabshas risen to 90 percent, compared with less than 20 percent in 1950 (Central Bureau

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of Statistics [CBS] 2002b). Yet governmental resource allocation for Arabs is stilllower than for Jews. Furthermore, although Arabs have substantial authority overtheir school system, the Jewish majority supervises Arab schools’ goals and curriculaas a means of producing loyal Arab-Israeli citizens (Mazawi 1995; Rinnawi 1996;Swirski and Houri 1998). Continuing neglect and discrimination toward Arabs is stillevident, sparking frequent flare-ups over the coexistence of Arabs and Jews in Israel.(For a recent review of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel, see White-Stephan et al. 2004.)

After 1948, several economic and social-demographic changes increased the im-portance of education in the Arab sector. Arabs became a vulnerable 20 percent mi-nority in the young “Jewish national home,” where security considerations weregiven the highest priority. Arabs found themselves partial members of the emergingIsraeli society, with limited access to social and economic opportunities (Ganem2001). Education in general—and, more recently, higher education—became a majorfactor in the Arabs’ drive to improve their status and move from the margins to themainstream of society to compete for more resources and power. This process in-cludes women, who are striving to improve their socioeconomic status (Al-Haj 1995).

Today, the Arab population in Israel resides in a variety of locations. Almost half(47 percent) live in villages and small rural towns of fewer than 10,000 residents.One-quarter live in small urban towns with over 10,000 residents, and 24 percent livein Arab cities with over 20,000 inhabitants. Only 4 percent live in mixed Jewish andArab cities (CBS 2002d).

Literacy among elementary and post-elementary Arab girls has increased fromvirtually 0 percent in 1948 (in Arabic) to a percentage comparable with that of thegeneral Israeli population today (in both Arabic and Hebrew). In 1970 only 9 percentof Arab girls completed more than eight years of schooling; by 2000 the figure hadreached 59 percent (CBS 2002b). The number of women who acquire post-secondaryeducation also is on the rise, as reflected in the growing number of female teacherswithin the Arab educational system (Addi-Raccah and Chen 2000; Rinnawi 1996).Teaching and nursing are the two major fields of post-secondary education for Arabwomen (Bader-Araf 1995; Herzog and Bader-Araf 2000). While constituting a smallerpercentage of the teaching force than in the Jewish educational system, Arab womenrepresent 64 percent of the teachers in Arab elementary schools and 37 percent inArab high schools (CBS 2001).

Women’s Status in Israeli-Arab Society

In the literature on Arab women living in Israel (excluding the territories occupiedsince 1967), researchers commonly use two terms: Arab women and Palestinianwomen. We have adhered to the terminology employed by each author surveyed here.The absence of women in formal school leadership positions reflects their status in thesociety. Many scholars describe Arab society, which is mostly Muslim (85 percent) andliving in segregated villages and cities, as patriarchal, with a hierarchy structured bygender and age. In these analyses, women are viewed as inferior and dependent(Gorkin and Othman 1996; Hassan 1991; Warnock-Fernea 1985). The two factors defin-ing the Arab woman are her biological role as a mother and her relations with the menin her life, including her father, brothers, and husband. Seldom is she described as anindependent person with rights of her own (Shaloufeh-Khazan 1991). Women’s sub-ordination to men in the traditional Arab family is governed by Muslim religious lawsand customs, to which the majority of the population adhere (Karmi 1996).

Views differ with respect to the potential for change in Arab-Israeli women’s sta-tus. Mar’i and Mar’i, both Muslim scholars, have emphasized the enormous role ofaccessibility of schooling, especially higher education, in the process of moderniza-tion (1985). Studying women in Acre, a mixed Jewish and Arab city in northern

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Israel, they concluded that with greater access to education, Arab women were inthe process of detaching themselves from their marginal positions, becoming moreactive participants in decision making within the family as well as in the realm ofpublic affairs, which traditionally had been off-limits to them. These authors por-trayed Arab women in Israel as change agents who took advantage of new andmore favorable circumstances to gain greater freedom and equality of educationand employment. Mar’i and Mar’i (1985) also demonstrated a close correlation be-tween women’s educational level and political awareness, qualities that enabledthem to become active change agents within their community. Writing at the sametime, Abu Baker (1985) pointed out that life in a mixed city significantly benefitedwomen’s status.

Ten years later, Bader-Araf (1995) described Arab women as still caught in a vi-cious cycle with little hope of escaping subordinate status. Acquiring an educationand professional status requires penetrating a territory exclusively reserved for men.Bader-Araf notes that higher education is the primary route for Arab women to ad-vance their struggle to upgrade their status in the family and society. According toBader-Araf (1995), whether educational advancement in fact contributes to achievingthese changes remains controversial. For example, Gorkin and Othman (1996) arguethat the rising status of educated Palestinian women did not bring about real im-provements in their status within the family. These women are still expected to ful-fill the traditional roles of housewife and mother, even if they hold a job outside thehome.

Arab Women Teachers and Their Paths to Higher Education

For the last decade, achieving positions of leadership in schools in Israel has re-quired a prolonged process of higher education, including the attainment of a mas-ter’s or bachelor’s degree, rather than the program of two to three years of teachers’seminars. These expanded formal requirements became distinct indicators of thetransition from teaching to higher administrative and managerial positions.

Statistics related to graduates of the seven main universities in Israel reflect thisdevelopment within the Jewish and Arab sectors. In 1985, over 8,000 students wereawarded bachelor’s degrees, but only 5 percent of these graduates were Arabs. In thesame year, 2,140 students attained master’s degrees; of those, only 3 percent wereArabs. In the 1990s the numbers of university graduates doubled, and the percent-age of Arabs among them reached almost 7 percent. Yet the percentage of Arabsgraduating with a master’s degree remained very low (3 percent). In general, over 95percent of graduates from the seven major Israeli universities are Jews (CBS 2002c,2003). Thus, the Arab graduates of those universities may be seen as an elite group.

Attaining a teachers college degree has become an intermediate educationallevel<Au: 2> for many Arabs and Jews in Israel. As of the date of this writing, 3,061Arab students and 30,761 Jewish students study in segregated teachers colleges.Among the Arab students in these teaching colleges, 91 percent are women, com-pared with 82 percent in the Jewish sector (CBS 2002a). The growth in female teach-ers in the last 10 years is about 11 percent per year in the Arab schools and 4.4 percentin the Jewish schools (Maagan 2003). Overall, the educational level of Arab womenhas risen significantly, primarily through enrollment in teachers colleges. Only a se-lect group of students enroll in master’s degree programs at the major universities.

Rabinowitz and Abu Baker (2002) describe the young Arab graduates of Israeliuniversities as a new generation who are changing the balance between traditionalArab authority and modern sources of power. Their analysis of the “stand tall gen-eration” highlights the role of young Muslim females within the political leadership

Hertz-Lazarowitz, Shapira Muslim Women’s Life Stories 53

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and power structure of Arab society, portraying them as an elite, committed groupwho are determined to make a difference.

The women in the present study were older than the “stand tall generation.” Somebegan their education in teachers colleges, but most continued their studies and grad-uated from a major university, and are thus the first generation of women attaininghigher education in their society. As teachers, instructors, and principals, thesewomen represent the link between the “traditional” and the “modern” or “stand tall”generation. Their stories reveal not only their personal development, but also the so-cial dynamics underlying their roles in a society that has undergone significantchanges in education, work, and personal freedom. It is important to understand howthey navigate between their newly acquired leadership roles and a society in whichthe majority of women are marginalized, especially with regard to power and leader-ship positions in the public sphere (Barkol and Kupfberg 2001; Ganem 2001; Herzogand Bader-Araf 2000; Shapira 1999; Shapira and Hertz-Lazarowitz 2002). This re-search is particularly timely, as there are few studies of Muslim womens’ paths toleadership in the social and the political spheres in general, and in the Middle Eastand occupied territories in particular (Hijab 1988; Warnock-Fernea 1985).

Research Methods

From our encounters with Muslims in Israel in the context of the universities andschools, we identified a group of women with especially illuminating personal sto-ries. This article is based on a subset of interviews with these women, undertaken byShapira in 1997 and 1998. To better understand the dynamics of the processeswhereby Muslim women assume positions of leadership in their society, Shapiraused in-depth interviews that elicited narrative personal accounts of leading Arabwomen educators. The underlying assumption behind the narrative approach is thatit enables individuals to arrange the “plots” of their lives into a meaningful whole,giving each event a unique place and significance (Mishler 1986; Ochberg 1994;Polkinghorne 1988). This work, carried out within the collective case study frame-work defined by Stake (1994), examines several individual case studies jointly, basedon the assumption that such a collection can lead to a better understanding of awider range of cases. At the same time, this approach enables the unique story ofeach participant to be told (Carter 1993; Casey 1997; Lieblich et al. 1995).

Participants

Shapira’s (1999) study included ten Muslim women educators at various Arabschools in the Galilee (northern) district, the largest district, with the highest per-centage of Arab schools. Only 13 percent of the principals were Arab women. Theywere selected for the study according to the following guidelines. First, they had areputation within the district and the schools as outstanding teachers, and they alsoworked outside their schools as mid-level leaders, including special education in-structors and educational coordinators. Second, they were recommended by othereducational experts (including those in nongovernmental organizations) or byschool principals and superintendents. Three of the women were school principals,and at the time of the study were the only Muslim principals in the district. Finally,some were selected on the basis of our acquaintance with them through our long-term educational projects with Arab schools in the district. Five were teachers andcurriculum instruction leaders, one was a grade-level coordinator, and one was rec-ognized as an outstanding teacher.

The women lived in diverse locations, including two Arab cities, a mixed Jewishand Arab city, and two Arab villages. At the time of the interview (1998), six of the


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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250185291_The_New_Narrative_Research_in_Education?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-459b9a49-bf6c-4523-a97c-0bbe25d9c3de&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMDQxMjA5NTtBUzoxMjQ5NzgwMDc2NDYyMTJAMTQwNjgwODQ4Nzg2MA==

ten women were married, and four were unmarried. Their age range was 24 to 44;two were 24 years of age and eight were from 34 to 44. They acquired their educa-tion at an Arab teaching college or at the university. Most of the women pursuedtheir education beyond the bachelor’s degree (see Table 1). Seven were acquaintedwith one of us prior to the onset of the study.

For the present article, we have selected the life histories of six of these women.These participants’ accounts were selected to provide the best representation of theoriginal ten women in the study. At the time of the study, one (Amira) was a schoolprincipal, three (Nadia, Lutfieh, and Wardi) were in mid-level leadership roles and,in addition to teaching, were instructional leaders involved in preparing teacherswithin their districts. The two younger participants (Hagar and Samira) worked pri-marily as teachers, but their stories suggest a career trajectory involving educationalleadership. A synopsis of the six women’s family backgrounds, education, and lead-ership positions appears in Table 1.

The Interview Procedure

In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted by Shapira, with the researchsupervised by Hertz-Lazarowitz in a way that allowed us to maintain a continuousdialogue about the content and interpretation of interviews. We identify the inter-views as ethnographic because they involve both “discovering” and “describing,”and they are aimed at uncovering and constructing the women’s realities (Spradley1979). Interviews occurred in 2 one-and-a-half to three-hour sessions (Casey 1997;Rubin and Rubin 1995) over a period of two years (1997–1998) and were held in apublic place that was quiet and promoted good rapport between Shapira and par-ticipants. Because the participants were all fluent in Hebrew, interviews were con-ducted in Hebrew. Interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed in Hebrew. Aprofessional translator fluent in Hebrew and English translated the interview ex-cerpts presented in this article from Hebrew to English. An Arab scholar-educatorfluent in the three languages helped us check culturally sensitive terms. Two Arabreaders approved the translation of the interview inserts.

Interviews began by asking each participant to “please tell me about your life andyour professional development in the course of your career.” Shapira asked severalclarifying questions and occasionally carried out brief conversations with intervie-wees. Participants could select any point in their lives at which to begin their stories.Two key questions were asked in the course of the interview: “Tell me about the fam-ily in which you grew up” and “Describe the influence you have on your immediateenvironment (family, friends) and more general environment, such as community,colleagues at work, neighbors, your home town or village.”

The second interview involved more specific questions intended to clarify, focus,and broaden issues raised during the first interview. For example, Shapira might ask,“You told me about the difficulties women have in the Arab society: Did this affectyou and your decision to leave the village and go to the university?” The goal wasto develop a conversational dialogue with the purpose of gaining information andinsight into participants’ lives as this related to the study. Specific questions referringto each woman’s position were asked. Principals, for instance, were asked, “Do youthink that there is a personal price you must pay as a result of your position as a prin-cipal?” If the answer was yes, the participant was asked to elaborate. Instructionalleaders were asked, “Please describe in detail those areas of your work in which youhave successfully introduced changes” (Shapira 1999).

Our status as Hebrew-speaking Jewish women might have been a drawback, yetthe participants showed marked interest in the study and were keen to tell their


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Table 1. Participants’ family backgrounds, education and leadership positions (Shapira 1999)

Names and Personal Details Education Leadership Position Key StatementNadia: 39 years old, Graduate of the Arab Teaches Hebrew in a “My mother never married with no teachers college and Christian school and had a room of her children. Grew up the Hebrew University. trains preschool staff own, not until she and lives in a mixed in the Arab sector. understood that she city in a family of also had a right to her 14 members. own belongings, and

she shouldn’t feel guilty about that. The girls were always taught that they are on a lower level.”

Lutfieh: 44 years old, Has degree in special A special educationtea- “Each day new suitors married to a teacher, education and training cher for children with would come and ask and mother of four in gender equality. hearing difficulties; [my mother] for my children; lives in a district trainer for hand. This led to large Arab town and gender equality in the quarrels between my works in a nearby Arab sector. core family and the village; grew up in a extended one, which family of nine children. lasted several years.

Once they even beat mother because they wanted to force her to give me away to one of the relatives.”

Hagar: 24 years old, Graduated with a Teacher of Hebrew “Three times I was single; lives in her master’s degree in literature at a high beaten because I said parents’ house in the education from Haifa school. to him [father], village. University. ‘Enough, she [mother]

doesn’t deserve it.’ I defended her.”

Amira: 36 years old, Graduated from the A teacher of special “I am the principal of a married to a lawyer, Hebrew University in education, who special- small school and I and mother of four; Jerusalem, and has a izes in hearing- hear people comparing born in a village in master’s degree from impaired children; had me with principals of the Jerusalem area, in Tel Aviv University. served as the principal larger schools regard-a family of nine; of a special education ing the advanced today lives in the school for the past training courses we Galilee area. three years. have in our school.”Wardi: 40 years old, Completed her studies Teacher at an elemen- “I want to get ahead in married to a teacher, at a teachers college, tary school and a life . . . to study and and mother of four; and has a bachelor’s district pedagogic get ahead. I don’t stay born in Haifa to a degree in education. counselor in the Arab in one place . . . I fly on.”family of five children; sector.today lives in a village.Samira: 29 years old, B.A. in education from An elementary school “My mother is closer single and living with Haifa University, with teacher of Arabic and to tradition, more her parents in the a specialization in co- of Hebrew; facilitator closely tied to the village, where she also operative learning in for Literacy in Co- earlier Arab mentality. works. Grew up in a literacy. operative Learning in Mother says I don’t fit family of eight children. the Arab sector. into our society and

that with my head and style of life, I should live among the Jews.”

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stories. Indeed, many revealed personal and sensitive issues, perhaps partly be-cause we were not members of Arab society.

Content Analysis

The interview transcriptions resulted in approximately 500 pages of text. In thefirst phase of analysis, four different readings of each text were conducted based onthe “voice-centered relational method” and on the “listener’s guide” (Brown andGilligan 1992:18–31; see also Spradley 1979). The first reading analyzed the story ofeach woman’s professional development, centering on the unfolding plot. The sec-ond reading entailed listening to the voice of each woman’s “self”—particularly herstatus and family background—as expressed in her biographical profile. The thirdreading entailed listening to each woman talk about relationships, and focused onher perceptions of marriage and life with a spouse. The fourth and final reading fo-cused on the way each woman perceived herself as part of particular socioculturaland professional networks. Once the analyses were complete, Shapira conducted“member checks,” sending each participant her interview and a brief written report.Each participant read the interview and summary, made comments if she wished,and approved the summary.

In this article we focus on themes emerging from the second reading—familybackground—and the fourth reading—women’s higher education as a springboardfor change. The complete interviews and analyses are detailed in Shapira (1999).

Biographical Profiles of the Women

In this section we present the biographical profiles of Samira, Hagar, Nadia,Amira, and Lutfieh (all pseudonyms) in the context of their family backgrounds andstatus as women and daughters. Brief descriptions of the women and excerpts fromtheir life stories appear in Table 1.

Samira, 28 at the time of the interviews, was an instructional leader with a bache-lor’s degree from the University of Haifa. She described her father as the person whoencouraged and supported her since she was a little girl. She perceived her lifestyleas not well suited to Arab society, and she often considered leaving her village.Samira recounted,

From an early age I have believed that a woman is no different from a man, as far as her abil-ities and strengths are concerned. I think that a woman is entirely like a man. It didn’t mat-ter to my father whether we were boys or girls. . . . He really treats us all as equal; heencouraged us to go on studying. My mother is closer to tradition, more closely tied to theearlier Arab mentality. Mother says I don’t fit into our society, and that with my head andstyle of life, I should live among the Jews.

One evening Samira returned home late at night, and her father was upset andworried about her reputation in the village. In reporting her exchange with her fa-ther, Samira said,

I’ve stayed here [in the village] not for my own sake but for yours and mother’s sake. I don’twant people to say that you didn’t succeed in bringing up your daughter properly so thatin the end she left you and went to live with the Jews, abandoning the life and customs ofthe Arabs. I came back so that people wouldn’t point a finger at your honor and the honorof my mother and that of my sisters. But if you push me too hard, I won’t hesitate to get mythings and go back to Haifa.

Hagar, 24 at the time of the interview, was studying for her master’s degree. Shegrew up in a family of six children, with an alcoholic father. She rebelled againsthim and tried to protect her battered mother. When Hagar was in the tenth grade,


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she found out that her father was using drugs. Her inner conflict was whether toaccept her harsh circumstances or to find a path that might lead to change andhope.

It was like a big, tremendous blow. It was a disaster. My mother could not divorce him.Being divorced in the Arab society gives the person the worst image. Being the daughter ofa divorcee is worse than being the daughter of a drug addict; it’s much more of a disgrace.Three times I was beaten because I said to him, “Enough, she [my mother] doesn’t deserveit.” I defended her; I don’t know where I drew the courage and the strength to tell him, “I’mcalling the police.” I was already 21 when this happened.

Nadia, 39 years old at the time of the study, was an instructional leader, agraduate of a teachers college and of a university leadership program. She grewup in a family of many children characterized by marked inferiority of themother and daughters. Nadia chose to marry relatively late, to lead an inde-pendent life, and to exert her influence on her younger sisters. At the time of theinterview Nadia had been married for about a year. She had grown up in amixed city, the daughter of

[a] mother of 14 children who was always busy with taking care of the house, preparing thefood . . . seeing that the children were taken care of . . . and she also had to help father pre-pare all kinds of things for his kiosk [a small shop for food and drinks]. I thought, there mustbe other things on the “other side of the sea” . . . the world is not limited to having a house,a husband, a wife, and children. We are constantly going through a process of change. . . .My mother never had a room of her own, not until she understood that she also had a rightto her own room and her own belongings, and that she shouldn’t feel guilty about that. Asthough she had to sacrifice herself for the children’s sake, that life should be good only forthem. . . . But how could the children be all right if she wasn’t? She suffered from within butnever even mentioned it.

We were seven brothers and seven sisters, and the girls had always been taught that theywere at a lower level. My own husband knew he wasn’t marrying a traditional-style womanwho would be willing to swallow anything—“Yes, sir, no sir”—the way my mother waswith my father or the way my older sister is with her husband.

Amira, 36 years old at the time of the study, was a school principal with a mas-ter’s degree. She grew up surrounded by the love and devotion of her parents,who in contrast to common practices, placed an emphasis on their daughters’ ed-ucation. Amira was born and raised in a village near Jerusalem. She moved to theGalilee district to be near her husband’s family. She has seven sisters and onebrother. Her parents had no education, but they made certain their daughters did.Amira recalled,

Ours is a family that took care of its daughters, while in the Arab villages no one investsmuch in girls. My mother wanted everybody to see that, indeed, we were girls, but that wewere worth so much more than boys, and she succeeded in that.

During the matriculation exams my parents took turns waking us up at night to study.Mother and father actually worked with us in shifts. . . . Staying up in turns, making surethe house was quiet, making sure we didn’t have to be busy cleaning the house. Their in-vestment was in us, in our education.

Lutfieh, 44 years old when she was interviewed, was an instructional leader witha bachelor’s degree from a university. She lived with her widowed mother, who hadto cope with pressure from male relatives to marry Lutfieh off at an early age andprevent her from studying. This harassment included violent acts against her motherand attempts to cause Lutfieh to fail in her studies.


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Lutfieh came from a very poor family. The third child in the family, she had twoolder brothers. She recalled her childhood with a certain bitterness because it wasspent in abject poverty.

My father was weak and couldn’t cope with hard physical labor. He was a merchant. Heused to work only on Fridays, slaughtering goats and selling the meat. Our financial situa-tion was very bad. Grandmother and mother made a handicraft they sold and that is howwe made our living.

When I entered school, my brothers wanted very much to see me succeed, and this mo-tivated me. When I was in ninth grade, my father got very sick, and nine months later hedied. My two brothers were aged 19 and 17, and we had a large family depending on us. Wewere left with nothing. My brothers gave up their studies and started working. I finishedhigh school. Mother, grandmother, and my brothers supported me so that I could go onstudying and get ahead. As to the extended family, many came with proposals of marriage.I always refused, though my mother sometimes wanted me to get married and get it overwith. Each day new suitors would come and ask for her daughter’s hand. This led to quar-rels between my immediate family and the extended one, which continued for several years.Once they even beat mother because they wanted to force her to give me away to one of therelatives.

When I finished high school it just kept going on: “Now she’s finished high school” [theywould say]. I talked it over with my two brothers, and we thought that if I continued study-ing that would silence them, so I enrolled at the university.

These biographical profiles reveal that the five women shared a high level ofexpectations about their lives and a strong desire for self-fulfillment, togetherwith an inner drive to influence the lives of others in the family while improvingtheir own lives. They all came from traditional Arab Muslim families, described asextended, patriarchal, and hierarchical, particularly with respect to gender andage. In two of the families (those of Nadia and Lutfieh), the father was deceased.In Hagar’s family, the father was a drug addict. Only Amira came from an intactand supportive family; readers can sense the harmony within her family of originand later within her own family. Samira came from a traditional family with anauthoritative father who worried about his daughters’ observing the Muslimcodes of behavior. Four of the five women had to rethink relationships in theirfamilies.

For some of the women, the mother’s life and her voiceless presence servedas a critical point of departure toward a totally different way of living. Thesedaughters wished to break away from their mothers’ generation in relation tovarious patterns, including their mothers’ perceptions about women. Many oftheir statements reflect the tension between what they wanted to become aswomen and the status of other women in their immediate and extended families.They made use either of parental support or parental resistance as a resource forconstructing their own independence, mainly by pursuing and achieving highereducation, which they professed as being both a means to and a goal for self-lib-eration. Striving for the right to acquire education and obtain professional workwas the driving force in their lives. In pursuing these goals they were similar tomany Arab Muslim women in the Middle East in the 1970s and later (Warnock-Fernea 1985).

The women we interviewed had to stand up to and confront their families andcultural traditions in order to build their own independence. Yet they did so with-out breaking the ties with their families, and all maintained good relationshipswith their parents, brothers, and sisters. Most of the women grew up in poverty,facing ethnic/national origin discrimination, and in distress. Being part of a poor,large Arab family with family problems was a challenge that was difficult to over-come. The women’s personal stories become a collective one of negotiating social


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pressures, surveillance, and the decision to break away to obtain education andself-liberation.

Women’s Higher Education as a Springboard for Change

The preceding section, focused on five of the participants, revealed complexityand diversity among the different families. Greater similarities are apparent in theirnarratives about higher education. In this section, we focus on the role of a univer-sity education in the lives of three participants—Samira, Wardi, and Amira.

Samira chose nonconformist pathways, examined opportunities, and challengedcultural limits in order to grow personally and professionally. Samira said,

Professional development begins with your personality. If, from an early age, you formulatean idea of what you believe in, you then simply set a goal for yourself and make a plan asto how to reach it. From an early age I was convinced that men and women are no different,except in our physical builds. I made a decision that if I could free myself economically, Iwould start to invest in myself, in Samira’s future.

From a very young age, when I was still in school, I got a job. After finishing high school,I worked for a year, saved some money, and began my studies at the university. I wanted tobecome independent, starting with my financial situation. I moved to Haifa and lived withan old woman, who gave me a place to sleep in exchange for taking care of her. During theday I studied at the university and in the evenings I went back, prepared her dinner, madesure she took her medication, and put her to bed. . . . And I had a room, my own phone, abookcase, and I began studying.

Samira later moved into the university dormitory and worked on campus. She gotinvolved in the Arab-Jewish center, and received several grants. She said,

I was enjoying it all because I felt that I was doing it for my own self so that I wouldn’t haveto depend on anyone. My mind also became independent; I was thinking differently. I was-n’t the type of girl who returns every evening to the village. I simply became independentin every aspect. When I finished studying, I felt there was a huge gap between the way Ilived my life and the life in the village. Eventually, I decided I’d go back, but each year I feelI must take a university course so as not to lose touch with things.

Wardi was 40 years old at the time of the study. A teacher and an instructionalleader, she graduated from a teachers college and also had a bachelor’s degree fromthe university. She climbed her way up the hierarchy of the educational system in aseemingly conformist way. However, Wardi stands out in her ability to forge ahead.She was praised for her excellent work as a teacher in promoting her students andmentoring colleagues:

When had I just begun working as a teacher, the superintendent saw how I worked with thechildren and sent me to a course on “active learning.” I began taking other advanced train-ing courses, and have continued doing so for the past 13 years. Today, I myself give train-ing courses in schools, and work at [a teachers college] one day a week. Then, I thought Ishould also get a degree, and I enrolled for the bachelor of education at [the teachers col-lege]. I also took a course in administration. Generally speaking, I’m always in a state oflearning.

I met my husband at the teachers college, and we got married and moved to the village. . . .I started raising my children, and everyone could see that my own upbringing was of a differ-ent nature. People talked about the fact that I went out a lot. [They would ask,] how do I man-age to do all my chores? How do I have time to take care of my children and cook for myhusband? I listened to it all and told them that it doesn’t matter how many hours a mother sitsat home with her children; more important is what she does with them. When I started takingadvanced training courses my husband said: “You are the only teacher I know who works somany hours. Why do you have to kill yourself with so many courses?” I answered him, “I’m not


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everybody else; I don’t want to be a teacher for the rest of my life. I want to study and get aheadin life. I’m not staying in one place—I fly on. If you want to fly with me, you’re welcome. If youdon’t, stay where you are, but don’t interfere with my affairs.” To this he answered, “Well then,I’m also going to study. Why shouldn’t I learn something, too?” That’s how he started studying,and eventually he wound up winning an administrative position. [So now] I don’t have a hus-band who sits at home waiting for his wife to get back. He is a busy person, and my children—each one is busy doing something. I come home in the afternoon; we sit together, have lunch,and then each of us goes to his own studies. . . . And those women who sat at home and gos-siped about me are all studying now, even the pregnant ones. They have all started to go out andstudy . . . leaving their children with their mothers-in-law and going out to study. How theworld is changing!

Amira developed her professional career in special education. She stood out to usin terms of her boldness and ambition. One can see a close correlation between herscholastic and professional achievements and the great investment made by her par-ents in educating her and her sisters:

I come from a large family. Neither father nor mother can read or write, but they made surewe would learn. I studied special education in the Arab division of the [teachers college] inJerusalem. Although I got my diploma with honors, it wasn’t too hard, not on an academiclevel anyway.

Amira described her career as a blend of learning and working in Jewish schools:

I had the opportunity of working in a school for the deaf—a Jewish school that had Arabpupils, and that was for me a different world. You have to prove yourself . . . challenges . . .comparisons between Jewish and Arab classes. I felt I could receive support there. I was get-ting hidden messages to move ahead [in my career].

After a year . . . I thought I had to go on with my studies at the university. I enrolledto learn special education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and worked in schooland in clinics for children with speech disorders. . . . I saw that I was lacking skills, so Iwent on and studied hearing disabilities at Tel Aviv University. . . . I specialized in lan-guage development . . . in infants and hearing-impaired children. I did research on nor-mal language development in Arab children and infants. At school I was in charge of theArab classes; I was appointed adviser on the Arab sector curriculum, and continuedwith development projects. I got married and studied “didactic testing.” . . . I had onechild after another, and when I moved to the Galilee, I took a two-year training coursefor principals.

Amira was appointed principal of the special education school in the village.

The most important thing for me is school—my work. I derive satisfaction from workingwith the children, and with the other teachers for the children. I am the principal of a smallschool and I hear that people compare me with principals of larger schools regarding theadvanced training courses we have in our school.

Each of these three women showed resilience in pursuing her goals: One lefther home and her village, another brought about a change in her life with her hus-band, and the third tackled career challenges within and between two culturalcontexts. They all considered themselves to be life-long learners, and all talkedabout three motifs: their desire to study and progress, their efforts invested in theacquisition of higher education, and the influence they had on their environment.Each woman uniquely arranged her personal life around studying and assumingnumerous obligations while ignoring or strategically negotiating social dictates.More than once they blazed an uncharted trail, standing out as exemplary figuresin their local environment and aware of their role as models that other youngwomen might emulate.


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Discussion

From the women’s life stories it is evident that they all grew up within a tradi-tional Arab-Muslim cultural context and a patriarchal family background. All ofthese women attained a high level of education, independence, and leadership. Theirleadership positions enabled them to exert influence within their families, as well asthe educational system, and all viewed themselves (and were) agents of socialchange in their communities (Khattab and Ibrahim in press).

In the following sections we examine the complex dynamics underlying theprocess of change undertaken by these women. Our analysis reveals three primaryfactors that were most significant within this change process: family and sociocultu-ral background, personal characteristics, and the strategies the women employed toattain their goals.

Family and Sociocultural Background

The traditional Muslim family, founded on religious and social-traditional val-ues, has been described as patriarchal, with women characterized as dependent, in-ferior to men, and having a role centered on being a wife and a mother (Afshar1993; Azzam 1996; Karmi 1996). Yet recent research as well as the life stories col-lected in the present study indicate that this family structure and these values havebecome less conservative and more supportive of educational advancement fordaughters (Bader-Araf 1995; Herzog and Bader-Araf 2000; Gilat and Hertz-Lazarowitz 2004). In some instances, such as the case of Lutfieh, the extended fam-ily still exerts considerable pressure on its young women to adhere to traditionalfemale roles. However, the more prevalent pattern is one of support by membersof the immediate family, mostly fathers and brothers, who encourage and facilitatethe young women’s educational advancement. Sociologists and social anthropolo-gists explain the change in the direction of greater support for girls’ education asemanating from cross-cultural contacts and exposure to the highly diverse Jewishsociety (Abu-Baker 1985; Bader-Araf 1995; Mar’i and Mar’i 1985) and the growingunderstanding within Arab communities and families of the potential for upwardmobility and socioeconomic advantages associated with formal education (Al-Haj1995; Ganem 2001; Rinnawi 1996). In line with these changes, the potential ofyoung women to become assets in terms of economic and status-related advan-tages has led to increased family support and facilitation of young women’s edu-cation (Hijab 1988; Hertz-Lazarowitz 2002).

Within families, the struggle continues between traditional and nontraditionalor “modern” values. On one hand, girls are permitted and even encouraged tostudy outside the village or the city, yet on the other hand, girls are constrainedby having to return home early, live in their village after acquiring higher de-grees, and abide by traditional norms for conduct. In the context of the “new gen-eration,” new possibilities have emerged for various levels of negotiationbetween young women and their families, in which women are testing tradi-tional boundaries while striving to maintain family cohesion and harmony. Thesedynamics can be seen in the case of Samira. Still unmarried at the time of thisstudy, she returned to her parents’ home in the village, constantly negotiatingwith her father about her desire to live a nontraditional life and his demands formore conservative conduct.

Personal Characteristics

In the life histories examined here, the women’s personal characteristics appear tobe closely related to their relationship with and perception of their mothers, and their


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mother’s own personal characteristics and status. All of the women described feel-ings of empathy and love toward their mothers. Yet most portrayed their mothers asweak and lacking self-expression and self-realization, a state of affairs that fueled theyoung women’s aspirations to become independent, strong, educated, and influen-tial in a larger public sphere as well as in the home as wives and mothers (Gorkinand Othman 1996).

The women’s descriptions of their course of development highlights their strongmotivation for self-empowerment. They understood early on that these goals couldbe achieved by means of education and exhibited a sharp awareness of the potentialof higher education and the importance of succeeding in their studies. Furthermore,they sought out challenging educational programs and, upon attaining their degrees,were not satisfied with a routine teaching career but rather engaged in further study,leading to administrative or managerial, special education, and teacher training po-sitions. Most of the women excelled in their studies and work early in their career.They continued to invest in their studies and professional development; and evenwithin more traditional Arab social spheres, they attained recognition, encourage-ment, and support to further their studies and professional abilities.

The women’s motivation for self-empowerment led them, at times, to make deci-sions that entailed a high price, especially within traditional Arab society. The high-est price some women paid was that they did not marry, although women of theirage in their community were generally married. Those who married and had fami-lies related that they had been criticized within their community for investing toomuch time and effort in their studies and careers and too little time caring for theirfamilies. Yet all of the women had the courage and resourcefulness to take novel andeven risky paths to achieve their goals.

Strategies the Women Employed to Attain Their Goals

The women employed several strategies to achieve their goals within three pri-mary spheres: their families, formal education, and their professions. Within tradi-tional yet changing family contexts, the women sought support from male familymembers, notably fathers and older brothers. This path was filled with continuousand at times tense negotiations as the women balanced their leadership aspirationsand Muslim family values. Constantly testing traditional cultural and familialboundaries, most of the women managed to engage in such negotiations withoutdisrupting cohesion and harmony within their families. Hagar’s story was an ex-ception. Yet in spite of distressing family conditions and fierce conflicts with her fa-ther, Hagar mastered the courage to enlist her brothers to lend their support to herposition. In general, the women were successful in convincing male family membersof the legitimacy of their goals, reassuring them that although these goals requiredgreater personal freedom, they did not require abandonment of Muslim values.Moreover, the women argued that by obtaining their career goals they would bestowrespect and status on the family and community.

In the sphere of formal education, the women began with the conventional path ofteacher education but, having achieved that, pursued more advanced, challenging,and prestigious graduate programs at major Israeli universities. Their decision to fol-low this path entailed an understanding that attending a major university would ex-pose them to a diverse campus environment. They encountered obstacles on campus,including those associated with minority status (Hertz-Lazarowitz 1988), but alsospoke of novel experiences that broadened their knowledge and perspectives and fa-cilitated their personal and professional empowerment. Their development as leaderswas related to their educational choices on two levels. First, their motivation to attainsuch a role informed their decision to follow a particular route in higher education,


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which was to attend prestigious universities. Second, their exposure to the universitycontext broadened and deepened their knowledge and skills as educational leaders.

In the professional sphere, the women invested a great deal of time, thought, andeffort in their work and were recognized for achieving excellence in their profes-sional roles. Each sought to advance her pupils’ academic achievement, providehigh-quality program management, and assume additional specialized teacher train-ing duties. The women perceived themselves as agents of change and sought to ful-fill this role by serving as role models in their communities. By advancing in theircareers in various leadership roles, they became catalysts for the professional devel-opment of other women. It is important to note that all of these women returned totheir villages or cities and contributed to their communities, providing living exam-ples that their society enables young women to combine traditional and nontradi-tional ways of life without this combination leading to insurmountable conflicts.

Conclusions

The women’s life stories reflected in the interviews provided both the participantsand us with unique insights into the complex dynamics of changing cultural andpersonal contexts within the Arab-Israeli community. Reading Shapira’s individualsummaries of their life stories, the women expressed how “hearing” their voicesthrough the interviews deepened their understanding of these dynamics of change.This, in turn, led them to reflect again, with pride, on their achievements and on thechanges they brought about in their own lives and within their families and com-munities. Some of the women subsequently became involved in an educational proj-ect in a mixed Jewish-Arab city and, together with teachers and school principals,exercised new forms of educational leadership (Eden and Hertz-Lazarowitz 2002;Hertz-Lazarowitz 2004).

The interviews and analysis of the women’s life stories enabled us to see moreclearly the nuances, details, and complexities of the women’s lives, and the dynamicways in which they maneuvered traditional family contexts and their aspirations forself-empowerment and professional advancement. These life stories provide anthro-pologists and educators with new insights into women’s struggles to transform theirsociety and act as agents of gender role and social change.

The situation of Muslim women and Muslim Arab society in Israel is extremelycomplex. On the one hand, there is greater openness within Muslim communities,but on the other hand this openness is constrained by the protracted conflict be-tween Israelis and Palestinians in the region. Along with gender, religion, and po-litical affiliation, national identity is an important factor in the construction ofboth women’s and men’s identities. The term increasingly associated with na-tional identity in Israel is Palestinian (Rouhana 1999; Smooha 1997). Arab youth—both young men and women—are engaged in struggles for Palestinianrecognition and equal rights (Rabinowitz and Abu Baker 2002). The active, coura-geous path taken by the women in this study can be seen as part of this largermovement for personal recognition and national identity within Arab-Israeli soci-ety. How this growing political activism and identification with Palestinians in theWest Bank and Gaza might affect the personal and professional development ofyoung Arab women is a pressing issue for future research.

Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz is a professor of social and educational psychology at theUniversity of Haifa ([email protected]). Tamar Shapira is a high school teacherand a doctoral student at the University of Haifa studying women’s leadership in the Arabsector ([email protected]).


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Muslim Women's Life Stories

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