Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Working Women

Here's an interesting item about women in Israel's workforce: Most Israeli Arab women aren't employed, though the reason offered is a fine example of obfuscation: due to cultural reasons and limited access to the job market. So which is it? And what's the statement based on, anyway? The item then tells that only 56% of haredi women are in the workforce, but that the rest - secular and modern orthodox - have a higher rate of employment than in any developed country.

Not all that surprising. I don't think I know any healthy women capable of working who don't do so.

As for the haredi women, here's an interesting article about the revolution being spearheaded by Adina Bar Shalom - who just happens to be the daughter of the Rav Ovadia Yosef, who backs her efforts. Actually, the fact that her father is an exceedingly important rabbi is probably what gives her the ability to be so revolutionary. A woman with lesser credentials in the hierarchical haredi society wouldn't dare, couldn't have the impact, and would probably be forced to give up.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OT
but as it is about women so be it

I've just been through the strangest text in a long time:

Robert Fisk from the Independent yes "the" Robert Fisk raises the alarm about honour killings of women and a few men and he doesn't have one whiff of apology in the piece. There seem to be altogether 5 pieces of it. Below's the link to the first one and what he says about Gaza and the West-Bank.

Silke

n "Palestine" itself, Human Rights Watch has long blamed the Palestinian police and justice system for the near-total failure to protect women in Gaza and the West Bank from "honour" killings. Take, for example, the 17-year-old girl who was strangled by her older brother in 2005 for becoming pregnant – by her own father.

He was present during her murder. She had earlier reported her father to the police. They neither arrested nor interrogated him. In the same year, masked Hamas gunmen shot dead a 20-year-old, Yusra Azzami, for "immoral behaviour" as she spent a day out with her fiancĂ©e. Azzami was a Hamas member, her husband-to-be a member of Fatah. Hamas tried to apologise and called the dead woman a "martyr" – to the outrage of her family. Yet only last year, long after Hamas won the Palestinian elections and took over the Gaza Strip, a Gaza man was detained for bludgeoning his daughter to death with an iron chain because he discovered she owned a mobile phone on which he feared she was talking to a man outside the family. He was later released.


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-crimewave-that-shames-the-world-2072201.html

Barry Meislin said...

Looks like Fisk is having a "Fidel moment".

But he is a fair-minded man; so stay tuned for some intense Israel bashing!! (One must, despite some occasional lapses, do one's best to keep the readership happy.)