’Both an Arab and a Woman’: Gendered, Racialised Experiences of Female Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Author(s)
Herzog, Hanna
Abstract
Following feminist and postcolonial discourses, this paper uses the concept of ‘everyday experience’ as a tool to trace the social world of educated Palestinian women in Israel. The term refers to the complex array of these women’s experiences in racialized and gendered social sites, as well as within the class, religious, and ethnic contexts in the subordinated group and its relations with the dominant Jewish group. Based on 108 in-depth interviews with Palestinian women citizens of Israel, the paper claims that educated Palestinian women are located in a ‘third place’ between cultural, gender, class, national and racial structures that generates a continual ambivalence. Within this marginal, ‘unhomely’ space women negotiate their own identities and challenge dominant social definitions. The ambivalent attitudes generated by the women’s experiences expose the possibility of shedding categorizing markers. The omnipresent existence of the gendered, racialized regime of knowledge makes every place a potential site of subversion and resistance.
