Owning Change: Shifting Gendered Power Relations Among Orthodox Jewish Women

• In Event: The Pull of Tradition: When Women Challenge, or Resist, Change

Abstract

Amidst a widespread debate taking place regarding shifting expressions and influences of religiosity around the globe, the intersection of religion and gender has become an increasingly central focus of research in a variety of disciplines. While much of the recent work has been sociological in focus important research has also emerged within the discipline of political science. Much of this research has converged around the question of how best to conceptualize and understand the actions of women whose compliance with conservative, patriarchal religious norms and values challenges more liberal notions of agency. This paper contributes towards this vibrant debate by investigating the ways in which Ultra-Orthodox women in Israel negotiate/narrate the gap between what is known as the Orthodox ideal and the reality of everyday practices in the rapidly changing Orthodox community—a gap that highlights the central role played by women in constituting and instituting change in their community.
For roughly the past three decades, the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel has been undergoing massive processes of change. For a variety of historical and political reasons, more than half of the men of the community now engage in full-time religious learning, leaving the women to bear the brunt of the financial support for the family. More recently, however, with changes in the employment market, Orthodox women are not only working outside of the home, but they are working more hours. With Orthodox men taking up more childcare and women becoming at times the sole bread-earners, this change has sparked a dramatic shift in the gendered roles within the household and the community and, together with it, changes in patterns and modes of women’s agency.
What makes the case of Orthodox women in Israel particularly interesting – and relevant to the study of conservative women’s agency and to the wider study of the role of women in promoting change – is that the processes of change, which have instigated this transformation in the everyday practices of Orthodox households, both mirror and foretell similar developments affecting women in developing communities elsewhere in the world. These developments, which derive from larger neo-liberal processes and from the expansion of global economies and markets, have resulted in growing numbers of women from traditional communities seeking employment outside of the home, thus taking on more of the burden of providing for their families. This shift has rendered the household and the extended community a particularly interesting site for investigation, as the absence of the women for long hours during the day is engendering significant changes in the division of labor and the domestic power relations between men and women.
In a series of group interviews that we conducted with Orthodox women from two Ultra-Orthodox cities in Israel, we investigated the ways in which these women narrated their roles as wives, mothers and women within the changing gendered structures of Orthodox society, with focus on how the women spoke about this change and about the growing gap between the Orthodox ideal and the realities of everyday life. We argue that the narratives revealed the struggle of the Orthodox women to maintain their pious identity by adhering to the Orthodox ideal, while at the same time engaging in modern practices that challenge this ideal in fundamental ways. We argue that this process of negotiation and mediation represents a profound political moment signifying and exposing dramatic shifts in the cultural, political and economic fabric of religious communities.
This paper thus offers three main contributions. First, we add complexity to both the submission/resistance debate and the distinction between “instrumental” and “compliant” agency and thus move away from the constraints of liberal frameworks of understanding, thus contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the agency of women within conservative religions. Second, by focusing on an analysis of agency in the context of changing patriarchal structures and practices, we deepen the understanding of the role of women in promoting change within conservative communities. Third and finally, our analysis contributes to the wider investigation of the ways in which micro-level sociological structures and processes within the household inform power relations on the macro level. Thus, our research embodies a call for a better integration of sociological and political research with the aim to achieve a wider and deeper understanding of the intersection of gender and religion.

Authors

• Rebecca Kook, Ben-Gurion University

• Ayelet Harel-Shalev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev