Palestinian Women in the Public Domain during the Late Ottoman
and Mandate Periods, 1831-1948
Ruth Kark and Roy Fischel
Kark, R. and Fischel, R. “Gendered Space: Palestinian Women in the Public Domain during the
Late Ottoman and Mandate Periods, 1831-1948”, Roded, R. and Greenberg, I. (eds.),
Gendered Space in Middle Eastern Societies and Cultures, Brill, Leiden (in Press).
Introduction
This article is part of a broad comparative study on the underlying concepts of land and land
ownership in different societies and in various periods.1 Here we consider the topic of gendered
1
Ruth Kark, “Land-God-Man: Concepts of Land Ownership in Traditional Cultures and in Eretz
Israel,” in A. Baker and G. Biger (eds.), Ideology and Landscapes in Historical Perspective
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 63–82; Ruth Kark, “Land-God-Women:
Women, Land and Property in Traditional and Modern Societies – The Case of Africa,” in
Bantebya Kyomuhendo (ed.), Women’s World (Kampala: Fountain Press), in press[update??].
This is the new reference:
Ruth Kark, “Land-God-Women: Women, Land and Property in Traditional and
Modern Societies – the Case of Africa,” in: Nite Tanzarn (ed.), Gender in Agriculture and
Technology, Gendered Worlds Series edited by Bantebya Kyomuhendo, Vol. 3,
(Kampala, Uganda: Kampala University, 2005), pp. 27-43.
space in the context of multidisciplinary general and Middle-Eastern theories and global
comparative studies. The article focuses on the economic and political activities of nomadic,
rural, and urban Arab women in the public sphere in Palestine during the late Ottoman and
Mandate periods. It will be argued that women played an important and noticeable, albeit not
major, role in the economic and political life of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
Palestine. We will define the spatial aspects of women’s activity and analyze the differences
between the various locations and forms of settlement. We will present our findings relating to
private and public gendered spaces along time, within the framework of the three main forms of
settlement: nomadic, rural, and urban.
In this study we perused a large array of both primary and secondary sources, many of which
proved disappointing to our purpose. In a follow-up study we hope to examine and compare the
different ethnic and religious communities in Palestine and their gendered spaces.
Theory and Comparative Context: Territory, Space, and Gendered Space
Several researchers, mainly sociologists2 and geographers,3 have discussed the definition and
concepts of territory in primitive and modern societies. Analogies to the animal world were
observed by others.4 It is striking that most of this literature neglected gender and women.
2
See, e.g., Erik Cohen, “Environmental Orientations: A Multidimensional Approach to Social
Ecology,” Current Anthropology 17 (1976): 49–70; Edward E. Soja, The Political Organization
of Space, Special Paper (Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1971).
3
See, e.g., Robert David Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986); idem, Conceptions of Space in Social Thought
2
Okin-Muler observed that the inclusive term “man” is not so abstract regarding the gendered
division of labor and its organization in spheres. Thinkers such as Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau,
and Hegel, when talking about responsibility and the value of spheres, both private and public,
perceived women in instrumental terms, i.e., women are an instrument for the fulfillment of
certain functions and beliefs in the private sphere, which is secondary to the public sphere. OkinMuler raises the issue of how the history (or histories) of women help us understand human
annals ,.5
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); Donald W. Meinig, “The Holding Eye: Ten
Versions of the Same Scene,” in Donald W. Meinig (ed.), The Interpretation of Ordinary
Landscapes: Geographical Essays (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 33–
48; Yi-Fu Tuan, “Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind’s Eye,” in ibid., 89–102.
4
See Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of
Property and Nations (New York: Atheneum, 1967).
5
Susan Okin-Muler, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979), 273; Henriette Dahan-Kalev, “Oriental Women: Identity and Herstory,” in Margalit
Shilo, Ruth Kark and Galit Hasan-Rokem (eds.), Jewish Women in the Yishuv and Zionism: A
Gender Perspective (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2001), 45–60 (in Hebrew).
Insert instead the paper and book in English which is in press and will be published in the
summer of 2008, you may wish to add this year??:
Henriette Dahan-Kalev, “Mizrahi Women: Identity and Herstory,” in Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo
and Galit Hasan-Rokem (eds.), Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics and
Culture (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England), (In Press).
3
In the past decade, parallel to growing interest in feminist research, the issue of gendered
space became a topic of both theoretical and empirical interest for scholars from several
disciplines (Kay, Domosh and Seager , Fenster, Monk, and Nash – to name a few geographers).6
Those who study gendered space in Middle Eastern societies and cultures may benefit from
familiarizing themselves with this literature. Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden, for
example, collated for the first time the most important essays concerning the intersecting subjects
of gender, space, and architecture.7 I read Anne’s paper and I think she should add a few
references such as this one to her introduction. It will improve it a lot. She can also refer to our
paper here in this respect. Pls. keep here as is.
It is also dealt with by Yossi Ben-Artzi, “Have Gender Studies Changed Our Attitude towards
the Historiography of the Aliyah and Settlement Process?” in ibid., 26–44 (in Hebrew).
6
Jeanne Kay, “Landscapes of Women and Men: Rethinking the Regional Historical Geography
of the United States and Canada,” Journal of Historical Geography 17 (1991): 435–52; Mona
Domosh and Joni Seager, Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the
World (New York: Guilford Press, c2001); Tovi Fenster, “Culture, Human Rights and Planning
(as Control) for Minority Women in Israel,” in Tovi Fenster (ed.), Gender, Planning and Human
Rights (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 45; Cindi Katz and Janice Monk (eds.), Full
Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course (London: Routledge, 1993); Catherine
Nash, “Environmental History, Philosophy and Difference,” Journal of Historical Geography 26
(1999): 23–27.
7
Jane Randell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden (eds.), Gender Space Architecture: An
Interdisciplinary Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).
4
When discussing women and the partition of space, Ardener observed: “Societies have
generated their own rules, culturally determined, for making boundaries on the ground, and have
divided the social into spheres, levels and territories with invisible fences and platforms to be
scaled by abstract ladders and crossed by intangible bridges with as much trepidation or
exultation as on a plank over a raging torrent.”8 Pls. see above
Examining the global situation of women’s space and place, Seager concluded that women
are relegated and restricted to their place in many parts of the world:
Women worldwide live with restrictions on their movements, public presence, dress and
public and private behavior. In some places, however, women face specific and legally
encoded restrictions which are rooted in assumptions about men’s right to control them.… In
many countries, women are under increasing pressure to conform to restricted roles prescribed
by fundamentalist religious interpretation… (Hindu in India, Christian in the USA, RomanCatholic in Croatia, Islamic in Algeria). Many critics and religious authorities denounce
fundamentalist interpretations as misinterpretations of religious teachings…. There are also
internal debates among feminists – for example, among Muslim feminists over the practice of
veiling.9
In a map she prepared on “keeping women ‘in their place,’” demonstrating religious
fundamentalism in the mid 1990s, Seager counted most Muslim countries among those with
“increasing religious fundamentalism leading to heightened legal and social restrictions for
8
Shirley Ardener, “The Partition of Space,” in ibid., 112–118.
9
Joni Seager, The State of Women in the World Atlas, new ed., Penguin Reference (London,
New York, and China: Penguin Books, 1997), 108.
5
women” and where “women need permission from their father, husband or male guardian in
order to obtain a passport or travel abroad.”10
Middle Eastern background
From the Middle Ages until the twentieth century, Islam has been reflected negatively and
patronizingly in Western writings. The Orient has been considered as being monolithic and
unchangeable, or, to use Baldensperger’s term, “the immovable East”;11 moreover, the Muslim
world has been referred to as being inferior to the progressive Occident. This alleged
backwardness of Islam is particularly apparent in writings dealing with women. For example, as
early as the seventeenth century, travelers such as the Frenchmen Eugène Roger and Laurent
d’Arvieux wrote that women were almost totally deprived of the public domain,12 an outlook
which prevails in early nineteenth-century literature as well.13 Although this view is, admittedly,
10
11
Ibid., 28–29.
The title of Philipp Baldensperger’s series of articles on the indigenous people of Palestine,
published in the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1906–1922.
12
Dror Ze’evi, “Women in 17th-Century Jerusalem: Western and Indigenous Perspectives,”
International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 27 (1995): 158–61.
13
For instance, Mary Shelley wrote in her novel Frankenstein (1818): “Safie related that her
mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her
beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her…. [Her mother] introduced
her daughter in the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect and
an independence of spirit forbidden to the female followers of Muhammad…. [Safie] sickened at
the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of the harem,
6
not disconnected from reality, it seems to be exaggerated. In the last few decades, however,
especially since Edward Said published his controversial Orientalism (1978), this opinion has
been changing gradually. The Muslim world is so widespread that many different cultures,
whose basic characteristics vary, are included within its loose framework. Among the Arabspeaking countries, major differences can be observed.14 Furthermore, even in a relatively small
territory such as Palestine, and over a short period of time, the various communities (e.g.,
peasants and city dwellers, nomads and sedentary populations) differ in many aspects, including
the status of women.
Ruth Roded wrote in her important programmatic paper:
The seclusion of women has been considered a defining factor of Middle Eastern society. A
growing body of evidence, however, challenges this axiom. The documented scope of
women’s public social and economic activities has raised the question of how the seclusion
and modesty of Middle Eastern women were maintained…. Influenced by the feminist
movements of the western world in the 1960s, a new approach to the history of women in the
ME evolved. It gradually changed the old stereotypes. New studies revealed the varied roles
of women in the economic, social and cultural life of the ME. Qualitative studies have shown
women as owners of property, and sometimes managers of property… in spite of the
allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill-suited to the temper of her soul…”
See Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (London: Penguin, c1994), 119–20.
14
There is a famous Arab saying that books are written in [intellectual] Egypt, printed in [liberal]
Lebanon, and read in [scholarly] Iraq. This saying demonstrates how Arab cultures view some of
the differences between circumstances within the Arab World.
7
patriarchal society’s pressures. Studies in economic and social history exposed that women
were active in a variety of productive spheres which were carrying economic income.15
Two quotations reflect some of the views (private and scholarly) on the “spatial status of
women” in contemporary Israel. Ashraf Fukhari (aged 28), a young artist from the village
Mazra’a in the western Galilee, noted during an interview (May 2003) marking the opening of
his exhibition “Ikhtilal” (Arabic for disorder, confusion) at Hagar, a gallery for Palestinian art in
Jaffa: “Ninety percent of the young women in my village have never left the village. Some, who
are very talented and cleverer than me, were not allowed to work and progress. They could not
travel and study abroad. They cannot spend time with their boyfriend[s] and feel free…”16
And Tovi Fenster, who studied the Negev Bedouin, quoted ‘Aziza’s story which also
illustrates the complexity of culturally constructed spaces in Bedouin society in the Negev, in
southern Israel, creating forbidden public spaces for women even today:
One afternoon, my kids were bored and being naughty, as there is no playground in the
neighborhood, so I thought why not take them to the park that we have at the entrance to the
town. You know, it is so beautiful, full of grass and flowers…very pleasant. After all why do
we need this if we can’t use it? So I went for the first time with my kids and after maybe ten
or fifteen minutes my husband came hurrying to take me back to the neighborhood. He was
angry, and told me: “Don’t you know it is forbidden?” Apparently his brother drove along the
road and saw me, and went straight to my husband to tell him.”17
15
Ruth Roded, “Mainstreaming Middle East Gender Research: Promise or Pitfall?” MESA
Bulletin 35 (2001): 21–22.
16
Dana Gillerman, “In the Name of the Arab Woman,” Haaretz, 20 May 2003 (in Hebrew).
17
Fenster, “Culture, Human Rights and Planning”, 45.
8
Women’s Economic Activity in the Public Sphere
Clearly, the basic condition for any kind of economic activity is one’s initial fortune and/or
access to resources. Within the Muslim legal system, women have a right to possess and manage
their own property without any interference by their legal guardians (e.g., husband or father).
Furthermore, women have explicit inheritance rights: the Koran itself dedicates two verses to this
subject (Koran, Sura 4 [al-Nisa’, “The Women”], verses 12–13), and emphasizes the right of
women to inherit a certain part of their relatives’ legacy, albeit smaller than the men’s share. On
the other hand, women were often deprived of an inheritance due to the endowment practice
(waqf), which provides a legal loophole to skirt the inheritance laws,18 as is apparent in the case
of dowry practice (mahr) as well [Thanks for the interesting comment. We will be happy to add
your comment here if possible, with thanks to the editors for their help. Can you pls. insert it
here?] The shari‘a sets rules for marriage, one of which is payment of money or property to the
bride herself,19 but in many cases, the bride’s household took all the money and left her with
nothing.20 However, much evidence supports the assumption that women had a certain degree of
access to property, i.e., the initial condition for economic activity was fulfilled. Similarly,
women’s access to the public sphere was determined by both the shari‘a and local practice.
18
Aharon Layish, “The Family Waqf and the Shari‘a Law of Succession in Modern Times,”
Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 384–86.
19
Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 161–68.
20
Iris Agmon, “Women and Society: Muslim Women, the Shar‘i Court and the Society of Jaffa
and Haifa under Late Ottoman Rule (1900–1914), Ph.D. dissertation, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, 1994, 191 (in Hebrew).
9
Therefore, a variety of restrictions and opportunities for women could be observed; women were,
indeed, restricted, but usually not totally deprived by society.
Bedouin women
In Bedouin societies, women were vital to the maintenance of their households in the extreme
living conditions of the desert. As the managers of their households, in many nomadic groups
(e.g., in Somalia) women were responsible for the most important roles relating to the home,
such as supplying water and wood, cooking, constructing the residence, and educating the
children.21 In other words, women perform the duties most crucial for survival in desert
conditions, and thus they control the products; moreover, their control over production leads to
their ability to participate in the manipulation of property.22 As for Palestine, Bedouin women
seemed to be less secluded than Palestinian sedentary women.23 For example, in a few tribes that
lived east of the Jordan River the ceremonial leaders of raids were young women; in other cases,
young Bedouin women led rows of male dancers in ceremonies. Among other tribes, when a
male came to visit and the head of the household was absent, the women entertained him; after
21
Labelle Prussin, “African Nomadic Architecture: Space, Place and Gender,” in Gender Space
Architecture, eds. Randell, Penner, and Borden (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 306–
307.
22
Cynthia Nelson, “Public and Private Politics: Women in the Middle Eastern World,” American
Ethnologist 1 (1974): 555.
23
Ada Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine (Jerusalem: Seeley, Service & Co., 1927), 62.
10
the head of the household returned they could still listen to the conversation.24 We have as yet
found no data relating to Bedouin women owning or dealing with real estate, animals, or other
non-personal properties.
Rural economic activity
Peasant women too played an important role in the economy of their households. They worked in
the fields of their family farms.25 Tawfiq Canaan mentions that “[t]hey are usually very diligent
and industrious, doing needlework and peasant embroidery, keeping chickens, goats or a cow,
selling eggs or milk, cultivating vegetables…”26 The lowliest duties, such as grinding wheat and
carrying water from the well, were considered to be women’s tasks;27 therefore, the village well
or spring was a mainly feminine domain. Women were responsible for most of the domestic
water supply and for laundering, which was done around the well.28 In the villages which were
closer to townships some went to town daily to work as household maids.29
[Figure 2: A Fellaha Housewife, Goodrich Freer.]
24
Tawfiq Canaan, “Unwritten Laws Affecting the Arab Women of Palestine,” Journal of the
Palestine Oriental Society 6 (1931): 184, 188, 197.
25
Susan Rockwell, “Palestinian Women Workers in the Israel-occupied Gaza Strip,” Journal of
Palestine Studies 14 (1985): 115.
26
Canaan, “Unwritten Laws,” 194.
27
Ibid., 181.
28
29
Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine, 72–79.
Prof. Moshe Brawer, quoting his childhood memories, personal communication, October
2003.
11
[Figure 3: Women gathering near El-Bire spring, Schiller.]
Urban economic activity
Records from the Islamic courts of Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Nablus dating from the first half of the
nineteenth century reveal many occupations in which urban women were involved. Some were
mediators between merchants and buyers at the market in exchange for goods or a share in the
profit; others were merchants and investors in trade. Yet others provided services to other
households (e.g., servants, cooks, laundresses); some were money lenders, mostly within their
extended family; and there were also business women, including managers of different kinds of
property, some of which was in their own possession.30 In addition, women contributed to the
prosperity of their households as textile manufacturers and as maintenance workers. Although
occupations of this kind were important for the income of the household, they were carried out in
the private domain and were usually unpaid.31
Restrictions on women’s economic activity
All this notwithstanding, women’s economic activity was limited compared to that of men. One
should bear in mind that women’s initial fortune, as mentioned, was smaller than men’s due to
30
Hassan Ibrahem Sa‘id, “Jaffa: Administration, Society, and Economy 1799–1831 according to
the City Sijil of the Mahkama,” Ph.D. dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 1995, 325–26 (in
Hebrew); Beshara Doumani, “Endowing Family: Waqf, Property Devolution, and Gender in
Greater Syria, 1800–1860,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40 (1998): 29; Canaan,
“Unwritten Laws,” 181.
31
Doumani, “Endowing Family”: 29.
12
mahr and inheritance practices; this necessarily meant there were fewer possibilities for women
to strike a foothold in economic life. Furthermore, the social and political structure banned
women from access to the main centers of power, thus usually limiting their activity to less
significant fields. For example, women were not able to play an important role in the trade
networks which had developed in Nablus during the nineteenth century, since these were based
mostly on personal relations with the heads of peasant households who, naturally, were men.
Social practice prevented women from establishing such personal relations. Moreover, as part of
these networks, urban merchants provided storage and accommodation services to those heads of
peasant households and helped them to interact with the authorities.32 All these activities were
considered to be a part of the public domain, which was mostly reserved to males, and thus
women’s activity was restricted. In addition, a few notable families, such as Al-Baraghti and
Abd al-Hadi in Nablus, banned any kind of women’s involvement and mobility in the public
domain; as a matter of fact, until the third quarter of the nineteenth century the women of these
families were hardly ever permitted to leave their homes.33
At the turn of the twentieth century, women’s options of access into the public domain were
extended. Palestinian society had been undergoing a process of urbanization; coastal cities,
especially Jaffa and Haifa, grew quickly in response to massive immigration from the
countryside.34 The growing urban population and the economic crisis of the 1920s, which led to
32
Ibid.: 37.
33
Canaan, “Unwritten Laws,” 184.
34
Ruth Kark, “The Decline and Rise of the Coastal Towns in Palestine 1800–1914,” in G.G.
Gilbar (ed.), Ottoman Palestine 1800–1914, Studies in Economic and Social History (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1990), 69–90.
13
high levels of unemployment among men, forced women to look for jobs in order to maintain
their families. Thus, women worked as servants and cooks and in the spheres of education and
welfare.35
Women were also involved in industrial/business activities. From an official source of the
Mandate Government of Palestine we learn that in December 1939 women accounted for 5.7
percent of the total number of employees in industry/business. However, in that year women
engaged mostly in traditional industries: they comprised 7.3 percent of the employees in the
tobacco industry and 25.2 percent of those in the textile (mainly weaving) industry. During
World War II, Arab industry in Palestine underwent rapid growth, the number of employees
more than doubling from 4,117 at the end of 1939 to 8,804 in 1942, with an increase to 23.5
percent in the tobacco and a decrease to 24.6 percent in the textile industries, respectively. These
expanded opportunities increased women’s ratio in industry from 5.7 percent in 1939 to 8.8
percent in 1942.36 However, throughout the 1920s-30s the official and normative concepts of
women’s role in society and family did not change. The Palestinian press, for instance,
emphasized women’s role within the Arab national framework as mothers, wives, and
housewives.37
35
Ela Greenberg, “The Cradle in One Hand, the Nation in the Other: The Portrayal of Women in
the Palestinian Press, 1920s–1930s,” HaMizrah HeHadash (The New East) 43 (2002): 56–57 (in
Hebrew).
36
Government of Palestine, Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944–1945 (Jerusalem: Department
of Statistics, 1946), 53, 58.
37
Greenberg, “The Cradle in One Hand”: 49.
14
[Table 1: Numbers and percentages of women employees in industry among total number of
persons engaged in Arab and other non-Jewish establishments in Palestine, 1939 and 1942.]
Rural women in the market place: Interaction between village and town – A case study Jaffa
Gate, Jerusalem (1913–20)
Our case study demonstrates a specific place in the public sphere in which women were able to
participate, albeit with a few restrictions. Rural women sold fresh agricultural produce (fruit,
vegetables, and milk) in city markets, especially at the Jerusalem market place at Jaffa Gate, and
later – during the Mandate period – in the newly established Jewish market of Mahane Yehudah.
Based on his father’s surveys from May and September 1913 and August 1920, Moshe Brawer
maintains that the market place was a mixed domain, in which women and men worked side by
side. In all, 68 percent of the peasant merchants at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem were women.
Merchants came to the market from twenty different villages, and at least half of those from each
village were women.
[Figure 4: Going to the town market, Goodrich-Freer.]
However, even in this case women’s activity was restricted. All women arrived from villages
that were no farther than a four-hour (or 12-kilometer) walk from Jerusalem, as compared to men
who may have covered larger distances. Women had to return home at night, while men were
15
allowed to spend the night in the city. Most of the women arrived in groups of three or more –
never alone – whereas men could travel on their own38 (see Map 1 and Table 2).39
[Table 2: Male and female rural sellers at the Jerusalem market place in Jaffa Gate, surveys by
Brawer, May and September 1913 and August 1921].
[Map 1: Villages providing the main fresh produce supply to Jerusalem]
Women in the Public Sphere: Political Activity
Throughout the Muslim world women did not participate directly in political life. However, we
have a few female de jure rulers, and more invoved in politics from behind the scenes. Certain
women, such as sixteenth-century Sultan Süleyman’s wife Hürrem Sultan (also known as
Roxlana), were able to exert their influence on the political life of the Ottoman Empire, women
were usually denied access to this sphere. The “politics of notables,” to use Hourani’s term,40
which was prevalent throughout Syria and Palestine, was restricted to men; the only political
importance of women was in their arranged marriages as a way to establish networks of alliances
38
Moshe Brawer, “The Supply of Food to Jerusalem from Its Rural Environment during the Late
19th and Early 20th Centuries,” Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical
Studies, 22 (David Amiran Volume, 1991): 45–51 (in Hebrew); idem, quoting his childhood
memories, personal communication, October 2003.
39
We thank Prof. Brawer for his permission to translate his table and map into English and
use them.
40
Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in Beginnings of
Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, eds. William R. Polk and Richard L.
Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 41–68.
16
between notable families. For instance, the alliance between the Husayni family of Jerusalem
with the Abu Ghush family (country notables) and the Darwish family (urban notables) was
based primarily on marriage connections.41
Absence of women in military records, 1831–41
It is striking that out of around 3,000 political and military documents from the period of
Egyptian military rule in Palestine (1831–41) which were examined,42 the last being from 1839,
only two included women as their addressees. The first is a letter addressed to Mehmet Ali
Pasha’s harem, congratulating them on Ibrahim’s military achievement in Konya in December
1832.43 The second document is a letter from April 1835, in which seventeen women of Tahr alHusayni’s harem complained that since their master had been exiled no one looked after them.44
It seems OK. What do you suggest??
Political activity – Second half of the nineteenth century
In any case, political activities such as demonstrations were rare during the nineteenth century,
and women were as uninvolved in them as were men. The few demonstrations which did take
place, however, were motivated mostly by acute problems and were non-political; women were
sometimes involved in this kind of public activity. For example, in August 1853, a group of three
41
Ilan Pappe, Aristocracy of the Land: The Husayni Family (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2002),
87 (in Hebrew); Doumani, “Endowing Family” 37.
42
Asad J. Rustum, A Calender of State Papers from the Royal Archives of Egypt Relating to the
Affairs of Syria (Beirut: American Press, 1940-1942; in Arabic).
43
Ibid., vol. 2, 216, document 2453.
44
Pappe, Aristocracy of the Land, 73.
17
hundred women demonstrated near the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, demanding to be
returned to their homes in the village of ‘Ayn Karm, from which they were expelled during a
struggle between two local factions – the Qays and the Yamans.45 Moreover, on rare occasions
women participated in battles by singing or throwing stones at the enemy, since they were not
allowed to carry weapons.46 In addition, as mentioned above, among a few Trans-Jordanian
Bedouin tribes, women were the ceremonial leaders of raids.
Demonstrations and delegations (twentieth century)
The local political arena changed in the twentieth century, especially with the emergence of the
Palestinian national movement. Women were motivated to participate in political activities, but,
once again, they were not as active on the highest national level as men. Arab women
demonstrated against the Balfour Declaration (1917) and were included in a 1920 Palestinian
delegation which met the British High Commissioner to Palestine. Others conducted
demonstrations in sacred spaces such as the Dome of the Rock and the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem, which were considered to be male domains. Roy, can you add a reference here??
When the Palestine Women’s Union was founded (possibly around 1921)47 some city women
traveled to villages in groups of five or six with the objective of increasing political awareness
among their rural counterparts. Most of these activities were initiated by women related to
45
Ibid., 99.
46
Canaan, “Unwritten Laws” 197.
47
Ellen L. Fleischmann, The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s
Movement, 1920–1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 109.
18
notable families.48 When Rosemary Sayigh interviewed Palestinian women from the Burj alBarajna Refugee Camp in 1974, she was told that although peasant women can talk about their
private nakba experience, they were unaware of the “plot,” i.e., of the Palestinian national
narrative and politics.49 This assumption seems to be exaggerated due to the part taken by
women in the Arab Revolt of 1936–39. Apparently, during the British Mandate period women
participated in political activities, initiated them, and were aware of the political conditions and
conflicts in Palestine. However, when compared with men the activity of women was restricted
and of a smaller extent.
Conclusion
Our findings to date may necessitate some revision of existing preconceptions regarding Arab
women’s socio-economic status, as well as those of the gendered space of nomadic, rural, and
urban societies. Palestinian women played some role in the economic sector, and a very
moderate, though increasing, role in the political life of Palestine in the nineteenth and first half
of the twentieth centuries.
Women participated in the commercial and agricultural spheres; thus, they were able to
contribute to the income of their household and to establish themselves as property owners and
managers. Women’s ownership of land and property, and their domestic and work chores,
48
Sherna Berger Gluck, “Palestinian Women: Gender Politics and Nationalism,” Journal of
Palestine Studies 24 (1995): 5–6.
49
Rosemary Sayigh, “Palestinian Camp Women as Tellers of History,” Journal of Palestine
Studies 27 (1998): 42–43, 50.
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enhanced their status in the family and society, increasing their presence and mobility in the
public sphere. Furthermore, during the first decades of the twentieth century women began to be
more active in the political arena.
A categorization of the presence of Palestinian women in the public space revealed
differences between women living in various settlement forms. In the urban framework,
education and a higher social position seem to be factors which most influenced women’s
economic and political activism. Both nomadic and sedentary women participated in activities
which took place outdoors. Bedouin women were able to interact with men in public and had
various ceremonial roles. We were not able to identify any involvement of Bedouin women in
entrepreneurial and land-ownership economic activities, notwithstanding a thorough
documentary search. [Yes. i.e. even today Bed. women are not involved in land ownership
activities]. Sedentary women, both rural and urban, played a significant role in land economy.
During the nineteenth century, women were observed in the marketplace as buyers and sellers,
rural women took an active part in agricultural work, and some urban women functioned as
entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and merchants or as professionals. In the twentieth century, along
with the mass migration of villagers to the cities and the emergence of Palestinian industry,
women’s contribution to urban economic life increased and they were able to penetrate sectors
which were considered predominantly male. Social practice and tradition banned women from
having access to some economic activities.
Women’s involvement in the public sphere can be observed in all classes of society.
However, one should bear in mind that despite apparent legal rights, in practice women faced
many barriers which prevented them from playing a larger role in public life. Women were not
able to participate in political life at the national level, although those of the upper classes did
20
take part in lower-level political activities. In addition, the nascent Arabic press in Palestine
cultivated women’s traditional tasks, which usually took place indoors. We conclude that women
were indeed active members of Palestinian society, but social codes barred them from achieving
a more significant role in the Palestinian public sphere prior to 1948. Finally, we should bear in
mind that even today we witness ambivalence with regard to women’s seclusion, as well as to
contradictions between legal rights, on the one hand, and the realization of Muslim women’s
rights, on the other.
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