Orna Blumen

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE JOURNEY TO WORK

It is now well established in geographic research that women commute shorter distances to work than men. This paper attempts to explore the common features that have emerged from the last two decades of research in various places within a metropolitan context. Three main sets of factors that may cause women to commute shorter distances are recognized: residence, employment, and transportation—each containing both social and spatial aspects. The analysis is centered around the spatial aspect. Most research on employed women seems to be characterized by distinguishing between the central city and the suburbs and thus the conclusions focus mostly upon this. An international comparison of different places shows that gender differences in commuting almost always are greater in the suburbs, from the point of view of both residential and employment dispersions. Directions for future research are suggested. Comparable methodologies will enable the inclusion of additional cities and will broaden the comparison. Th...

The Performative Landscape of Going-To-Work: On the Edge of a Jewish Ultraorthodox Neighborhood

Following recent insights into performativity and space, I explore the widespread routine of going-to-work as a capitalist ritual. Going-to-work produces a powerful yet ordinary, unspectacular landscape, whose performativity is fourfold: the compatibility of the material form and human use of it; the movements of people and the clothes they wear; the variety of individual practices of going-to-work; and the timing and spacing of this collective ritual. Generally, going-to-work is performative, because it transforms people into employees, defining productivity in terms of paid work. Hence, the prime quality of this landscape is to enhance economically productive bodies. In the second part of this paper, I examine this productive—nonproductive distinction in a unique setting on the edge of an Israeli neighborhood of ultraorthodox Jews, whose definition of mens work—unpaid religious studies—contrasts with that of the majority of the modern population. The distinctive ultraorthodox appearance, originally designed to mark a particular Jewish identity, signifies their nonproductivity as a spatial performance of Otherness. This provides an opportunity to probe going-to-work in this specific place as an arena where the ultraorthodox identity as Other intersects with their capitalist identity as Other. Short street interviews with modern and ultra-orthodox Jews show that they recognize work as the main theme of this landscape. They are also aware that work is socially defined and can be criticized on both capitalist and ultraorthodox—religious grounds, and they illustrate how the controversy over the definition of work lies within the struggle over Jewish identity. I conclude by illuminating the performative role of space in displaying identity and social ideas.

NEGOTIATING NATIONAL BOUNDARIES: PALESTINIAN AND JEWISH WOMEN’S STUDIES STUDENTS IN ISRAEL

This article examines the intersection of gender and national identity in an Israeli university, focusing on the Womens Studies classroom. Taking into consideration the overshadowing effect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, we wondered how exposure to Womens Studies’ egalitarian ethos and studying in a mixed Palestinian–Jewish classroom affects the feminist solidarity and national identity of young women students. In-depth interviews with eleven Palestinian and twelve Jewish Womens Studies’ graduates indicate that solidarity between women of the two groups is built around womens issues, such as equal employment opportunities and reforms in the educational system. Considering the solidarity built around womens, as opposed to feminist, issues, it seems that national differences override the potential for a feminist solidarity.

The Academic Conference and the Status of Women: The Annual Meetings of the Israeli Geographical Society*

Abstract The academic conference, a site of possible changes in professional knowledge and hierarchy, is an area of academic life rarely studied. Through three main concerns this article illuminates this point for the first time with respect to the status of women and gender research at the last thirty-two annual meetings of the Israeli Geographical Society. First, although men still present the majority of the conference papers, women have increased their share and now constitute one-third of all active participants. Second, womens appearance as chairs of sessions and keynote speakers is significantly lower in proportion to their overall participation in the conference, and they are consistently more involved in its less prestigious aspects. Third, the production of geographic knowledge as reflected in conference papers is gendered, but its pattern differs from that in academia in general. The findings reveal a new facet of the gendered construction of academic life in general, and of Israeli geography in particular, and offer new avenues to revealing the impact of social exclusion on academia.

Staging Peace Through a Gendered Demonstration: Women in Black in Haifa, Israel

Israeli Women in Black was founded twenty years ago to demonstrate for peace and against the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Their political activism involves three spatial processes: outing their protest by taking to the streets, locating their protest through strategic siting, and performing their politics, thus redefining the places they occupy. The Haifa chapter has relocated its demonstrations several times in response to political opposition. Observations and interviews support our analysis of the geographical implications of their unique method of demonstration, their locational choices, and the tension between their femininity and activism played out against the city dynamic.

Women's professional choice in geography: National sentiments and national exclusion

Abstract This article demonstrates the impact of the masculine construction of both modern nationalism and academia on the estrangement of women within the academic discipline of geography in Israel. I argue that the academic elite of Israeli geography has been constructed as a national-masculine arena, combining the heritage of power relations in modern geography and the imperative to serve the national return of exiled Jews to their ancient homeland. I begin by analyzing the masculine construction of Jewish Israeli culture and ideology, in general, and that of Israeli geography, in particular, and go on to examine how this maculinization shaped the professional choice of eight junior women geographers, whose biographies are similar to mine. Relying on in-depth interviews, the article discusses the common features that attracted these women to the masculine discipline of geography, and how, at undergraduate level, they opted for teaching as a means of realizing their personal interests and national sentiments toward the landscape. I further argue that by labeling teaching a feminine domain, these women focused on the national-masculine field of geography without breaking the national consensus that marginalizes women. Moreover, the construction of breadwinning as masculine was seen as significant in these womens choices, as it allowed them some freedom. In conclusion, therefore, I argue that for these junior women geographers, opting for teaching is one way of eschewing “masculine” economic responsibility, and this replays, rather than challenges, gender divisions in Israeli society.

What a Difference a Place Makes: The Reflexive (Mis) management of a City’s Pasts

In this article the authors use the concept of “place memory” to contemplate how the temporal qualities of places inflect the activities carried out in them by considering how one group, the Haifa chapter of Women in Black (WiB) in Israel, makes conscious and unconscious use of the possible readings of an “ordinary” place and its history. The authors demonstrate the argument by analyzing the group’s peregrinations over the past twenty years. After pointing to some scholarly insights regarding the use of place by protest movements and a brief introduction to the city of Haifa and WiB and its members, the authors move through the various sites where the movement held its vigils; they close by considering how the pasts of a place permeate the present and, in so doing, disrupt any possible unilinear reading of a place and open it up to multilinear and nonlinear readings.

The site of silence: Performing the economy of (non-)memory in Israel

In this study we seek to understand the gendered dynamics of bearing witness, remembering, and mourning in contemporary Israeli society by examining the performative practices of one protest movement, Women in Black (WiB). Our focus is on the Haifa chapter of the movement, whose vigils we observed over a seven-year period. After a brief overview of the literature regarding national remembering and commemoration in Israel, the formation of WiB and its place in Israeli political life and discourse, we move to our analysis of the vigil. We argue that by analyzing WiBs vigil as a performance, we are able to complicate the discussion concerning women, performance and remembrance in general and in Israel in particular. We find that through their performance WiB disrupts the current “economy of memory” in Israel; by remembering and performing that which many would like to remain forgotten – the occupation which followed the 1967 War and its consequences – it engages in a project of “transformative remembering,” which disturbs its audiences equanimity and forces it to review its past.

Employee benefits and high-tech fatherhood

Purpose – This study, inspired by the theory of the separate spheres, considers the social circumstances of employee benefits, examining the needs of fathers in dual-earner families to cope with work and family responsibilities. The purpose of this paper is to explore how high-tech managers view the work-family interface of R & D engineers and analyzes the typical package of discretionary, non-financial, work-family employee benefits. Design/methodology/approach – Relying on the phenomenological approach, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 22 private-sector managers disclosed their shared perception and experience, revealing the informal level at which underlying social principles becomes business strategy, often intuitively. Findings – Values of gender are assimilated into the informal environment and reflected in the selection of benefits which have been effective in attracting labor in demand. Recently these values have been challenged by new ideas of more involved fatherhood, and these are inad...