Discrimination, Not Culture, Keeps Families in Poverty
By JONATHAN COOK
Counterpunch
November 30, 2009
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.
A shorter version of this article originally appeared in The
National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
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