New Article: Jabareen, Reducing Poverty among Arab and Muslim Women

Jabareen, Yosef. “Reducing Poverty among Arab and Muslim Women: The Case of Arab Women in Israel.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 16.3 (2015): 117-36.

 

URL: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol16/iss3/9

 

Abstract

The international experience suggests that work is the best way of lifting families out of poverty. Thus, this paper assumes that one crucial policy, among many others, aimed at poverty reduction is to increase the women’s participation in the labour market and their access to decent work. This issue is critical among Arab and Muslim women around the world in general and among Arab women in Israel since the participation rate of women in the labour market is quite low and about 55% of the Arab families live under the poverty line. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the reasons behind the low rate of Arab female participation in the labor market, and based on that to propose a framework for increasing their participation rate and reducing poverty among them and their households. An empirical study, based on 574 personal interviews, was conducted among unemployed Arab women in Israel. This paper identified four major domains that affect the level of employment participation: the socio-cultural domain, the ethno-political domain, the personal domain, and the spatial domain. Eventually, the paper proposes interference policies based on these domains in order to reduce poverty among Arab minority women in Israel.