2 December 2009
By
Jonathan Cook
Israel’s finance minister
was accused last week of trying to deflect attention
from discriminatory policies keeping many of the
country’s Arab families in poverty by blaming their
economic troubles on what he described as Arab
society’s opposition to women working.
A recent report from
Israel’s
National Insurance
Institute
showed that half of all Arab families in Israel are
classified as poor compared with just 14 per cent of
Jewish families.
Yuval
Steinitz,
the finance minister, told a conference on
employment discrimination
this month that the failure of Arab women to
participate in the workforce was damaging Israel’s
economy. Eighteen per cent of Arab women work, and
only half of them full time, compared with at least 55
per cent of Jewish women.
He attributed the low
employment rate to “cultural obstacles, traditional
frameworks and the belief that Arab women have to
remain in their home towns”, adding that such
restrictions were characteristic of all Arab
societies.
But researchers and women’s
groups pointed out that employment of Arab women in
Israel is lower than almost anywhere else in the
Arab world,
including such employment blackspots for women as
Saudi Arabia
and Oman.
“Most Arab women want to
work, including a large number of female graduates,
but the government has refused to tackle the many and
severe obstacles that have been put in their way,”
said Sawsan Shukha of Women Against Violence, a
Nazareth-based organisation.
That assessment was
supported by a survey this month revealing that 83 per
cent of Israeli businesses in the main professions –
including advertising, law, banking, accountancy and
the media – admitted being opposed to hiring Arab
graduates, whether men or women.
Yousef Jabareen, an urban
planner at the Technion technical university in Haifa,
who has conducted one of the largest surveys on Arab
women’s employment in Israel, said the problems Arab
women faced were unique.
“In Israel they face a
double discrimination, both because they are women and
because they are Arabs,” he said.
“The average in the Arab
world [for female employment] is about 40 per cent.
Only women in Gaza, the West Bank and
Iraq -- where
there are exceptional circumstances -- have lower
rates of employment than Arab women in Israel. That
gap needs explaining and the answers aren’t to be
found where the minister is looking.”
He said a wide range of
factors hold Arab women back, many of them the result
of discriminatory policies by successive governments
to prevent the 1.3-million Arab minority, which
comprises one-fifth of Israel’s population, from
benefiting from economic development.
These included widespread
discrimination in hiring policies by both private
employers and the government; a long-standing failure
to locate industrial zones and factories in Arab
communities; a severe lack of state-supported
childcare services compared with Jewish communities; a
shortage of public transport in Arab areas that
prevented women reaching places of work, and a lack of
training courses aimed at Arab women.
According to a study by
Women Against Violence, 40 per cent of Arab women with
degrees are unable to find work.
When interviewed, Mr
Jabareen said, 78 per cent of non-working women blamed
their situation on a lack of job opportunities.
Maali Abu Roumi, 24, from
the town of Tamra in
northern Israel,
has been looking for a job as a
social worker
since she finished training two years ago.
A report by Sikkuy, an
organisation promoting civic equality in Israel,
revealed this month that Israel’s Arab population
received 70 per cent less government funding for
social services than the
Jewish population,
and that Arab social workers – in a poorly paid
profession that attracts mainly women – had a 50 per
cent higher workload.
Ms Abu Roumi added that, in
addition, cash-strapped Arab schools, unlike Jewish
schools, could not afford to employ a social worker,
and that Israel’s Arab minority lacked the equivalent
of the welfare institutions and foundations funded by
wealthy overseas Jews that offered work to many Jewish
social workers.
“Most of the Jews I studied
with have found work, while very few of the Arabs on
my course have been employed,” she said. “When a job
comes up, it’s usually part time and there are dozens
of applicants.”
The Alternative Planning
Centre, an Arab organisation that studies land use in
Israel, reported in 2007 that only 3.5 per cent of the
country’s industrial zones were in Arab communities.
Most attracted small businesses such as workshops for
car repairs or carpentry that offered few
opportunities for women.
“Israel’s private sector is
almost entirely closed to Arab women because of
discriminatory practices by employers who prefer to
employ Jews,” Mr Jabareen said. He added that the
government had failed to provide leadership: among
governmental workers, less than two per cent were Arab
women, despite repeated pledges by ministers to
increase Arab recruitment.
Ms Shukha said: “The civil
service is a major employer, but many of these jobs
are in the centre of the country, in
Tel Aviv or
Jerusalem,
a long way from the north where most Arab citizens
live.”
She noted that there were
no regular buses from
Nazareth,
the largest Arab town in the country, to Jerusalem.
“The transport situation is even worse in the villages
where most Arab women live.”
In addition, she said, most
could not travel long distances to find work because
of the scarcity of child-care provision. Only 25
government-run daycare centres have been established
for preschool children in Arab communities out of
1,600 operating across the country. Ms Shukha also
criticised the trade and industry ministry, saying
that, although it had invested heavily in training for
Jewish women, only six per cent of Arab women were
attending courses, and then mostly for sewing and
secretarial work.
Mr Jabareen said that,
according to his survey, 56 per cent of non-working
Arab women wanted to work immediately.
“Since 1948 Israeli
governments have been blaming poverty on ‘cultural
barriers’ stopping Arab women from working, but all
the research shows that the argument is nonsense,” he
said. “There are hundreds of Arab women competing for
every job that comes on the market.”
He said Arab men faced
massive discrimination, too, but found work because
they filled a need in the economy by doing hard
manual labour
that most Jews refused, often travelling long
distances to work on construction sites.
“Women simply don’t have
that option,” he said. “They cannot do that kind of
work and they need to stay close to their communities
because they have responsibilities in the home.”
Mr Jabareen added that on
average Arab women in Israel had a higher number of
schooling years than those in Arab countries and the
Third World.
There were even slightly more Arab women at
Israeli universities
than Arab men.
“All the research shows
that the more educated the population, the more it
should be able to find work. The case with Arab women
in Israel breaks with the trend. It’s unique.”
A study by the
Bank of Israel
published this month suggested additional reasons for
the high levels of poverty among Arab families. It
showed that Arab men were typically forced into
retirement in their early 40s, at least a decade
before Israel’s Jewish workers and workers in Europe
and the United States.
The researchers attributed
Arab men’s early unemployment to the fact that most
are restricted to physically demanding labouring jobs,
and because they are rapidly being replaced by
Third World workers
who are paid less than the minimum wage.
Jonathan Cook
is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel.
His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations: Iraq,
Iran
and the Plan to Remake the
Middle East”
(Pluto
Press) and
“Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human
Despair” (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.
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