Women in Israel

Nahla Abdo is Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Among her recent publications are Gender, Citizenship and the State: The Israeli Case. 2009 (Arabic); Women and Poverty in the OPT: Some Conceptual and Methodological Notes (2007); Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges (2004, co-edited), and Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation (2002, co-edited).

Through a powerful mobilization of hard evidence about systemic differences in women's economic rights and educational experiences in Israel, Abdo offers an historically grounded alternative to prevailing frameworks that ignore the foundational racialization of Zionism and its settler-colonial project. This comparative study of Palestinian, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi women demonstrates perfectly why feminists argue that we must analyze the intersections of gender, race, and class. Ethnicity, religion, and culture unhitched from the dynamics of the nation-state, Abdo shows, explain nothing. Ultimately, the book is a call to envision a different kind of state where citizenship rights are based on equality.

• Introduction1. Women, State and Citizenship: The Israeli Context2. Women in Israel/Palestine: The Relevance of History3. Women and the Economy4. Women, Education and Human CapitalConclusion