​Flexing Boundaries, Taking Advantage of Opportunities: Druze Pious Women with High-Tach Careers

Ebtesam Barakat

The current research explores the Lotus NGO and its initiation as a sphere of negotiation aimed at promoting Druze pious women in the professional labor market. This study suggests that the Lotus venture offers new opportunities while also addressing the needs of women through negotiation with the religious clergy and state authorities. The author examined how the complex mutual relations between the state and the Druze community were reflected in the measures used by the founder to develop her initiative. The main argument in this research is that the workspace model developed by Lotus is dynamic and changing based on the interactions between pious women and employers, high-tech companies, and religious leaders. 
    Literature about the interface between religion and gender in the labor context is constantly on the growth. Mostly, researchers examine the way by which gender-biased religious conceptions affect the ability of pious women to integrate in the labor market, as well as elements that enable or limit this integration. Literature often focuses on Muslim women in Western countries, as well as in Muslim Middle Eastern countries, recently also adding pious Jewish women, particularly in Israel. Other religious groups are often under-researched. 
    The current research is based on two theories – religious feminism and intersectionality. According to the first theory, of religious feminism, the actions taken by women to shape their religiosity is a protest against neo-liberal, individualistic culture, which consumerizes the female body, as well as against patriarchal culture. Researchers who base their work on this approach resonate Deniss Kandiyoti’s paper, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”, arguing that pious women bargain with power cores based on their social, cultural, religious, and organizational context to establish their pious identity. In their piety, in their daily routine, in their religious activism and in adapting their work environment to their religious identity, they ostensibly obey religious orders, while at the same time bargaining with a number of social power cores. The second theory is intersectionality, which assumes that people are subordinated simultaneously to multiple systems of oppression, control, racism and discrimination. Based on this theory, the different oppression categories (race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual preferences and more) are not separated; they are intertwined, gaining an accumulative effect on the action of social power relations.
    This paper is based on a case study, explored through 18 semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 Druze pious women who work at Lotus, Lotus CEO, a religious leader and two Jewish women representing high-tech companies, as well as a discussion group session and two observations. The interviews were conducted in 2019 (when the Lotus venture was established) and in 2022. The analysis of the interviews and observations was conducted based on the coding and analysis stages offered by Corbin and Strauss.
    The interviews yielded two main themes. First: Lotus as a dynamic workspace, which integrates Druze pious women in the labor market. The greatest achievement of the Lotus founder and partners was the creation of a model that allows Druze pious women with no academic education the opportunity to work in quality high-tech jobs. This goal was achieved by adjusting the workspace to the needs of women through al-Sheikh’s negotiation with the various stakeholders, which took into consideration the women’s needs, the limitations set by religious leaders, and the state’s opportunities. The second theme is high-quality professional development while maintaining religious identity through negotiation: The pious Druze women in this venture conduct negotiation, which testifies to the complexity of this project – on one hand, the women set the boundaries of their work environment vs. the CEO and the employers, adjusting it to religious requirements. On the other hand, they work for a relatively low wages compared to other high-tech employees, and they often prioritize their work over their family to realize their dream of professional development.
    The Lotus workspace model, which is gender segregated, was created based on the women’s desire to integrate in the professional labor market. The formal liberal perception opposes gender segregation in the public sphere, claiming this segregation leads to women’s exclusion from senior positions and sometimes their humiliation as well. Yet, in pious social groups, like the Druze community, which forbid religious women from spending time in mixed-gender society and leave their place of residence without an escort, the creation of a high-quality, safe workspace within the community itself is the only way to promote their integration, even at the expense of gender segregation. In this workspace, the pious women develop a new professional identity while maintaining their affiliation with the religious community. While the Lotus workspace is located within the Druze villages, it is still a global workspace, which exposes women to the high-tech world, enhances their ability to integrate in high-quality positions and develop a professional career with legitimation from the religious leadership. These findings reaffirm those of previous studies, which explored safe workspaces for pious, excluded women, like Jewish ultra-orthodox. These spaces, whose success in the professional field has been proven, contribute to the women’s sense of security and strengthen their religious identity. The discussion highlights how pious women, who are oppressed by different intersections, act from this position to create workspaces that fit their religious identity. Therefore, these intersections may be viewed as opening women’s opportunities, rather than merely an oppressive force.

Keywords: Pious women, Female workspace, High-tech, Negotiation, Religious rule 

 

"In What Ways am I Haredi?" – Identity and Agency of Haredi Career Women in between Work, Religiosity and Community​

Michal Frenkel

Until recently, the workforce integration of Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) women was regulated by a 'segregated integration regime.' Employers' commitment to treating Haredi women as a collective and implementing tailored diversity practices has facilitated their employment in predominantly Haredi settings, even in gender- and religiosity-diverse workplaces, assisting them in navigating identity complexities that may surface during interactions with the secular world. Nevertheless, as these women move beyond homogeneous environments into career-oriented paths, they often face internal and external inquiries regarding the essence of their Haredi identity.

    This article centers on pathbreaking Haredi career women who, through their professional journeys, have diverged from the traditional expectations of the Haredi community and distanced themselves from their insular peer group. These women, equipped with resources and skills, have forged their unique paths despite community pressures but have opted to retain their Haredi identities while navigating the complexities of being trailblazers in a community known for its conformity.

    Through a hermeneutic analysis of semi-structured interviews with twenty Haredi career women who have challenged traditional gender roles and societal norms within the Haredi community, this study explores the identity work undertaken by these women and the agency strategies they employ to navigate external and internal tensions between their professional and religious identities. This identity work is characterized by boundary work, involving strategies to delineate differences between groups and establish criteria for inclusion and exclusion. In this context, it signifies a reconfiguration of the boundaries of inclusion within Haredi society, enabling the integration of working women into the group despite deviations from certain established norms. This reframing suggests a substantive social transformation within this close-knit community.

    The article delineates four pivotal agentic strategies forged by pathbreaking Haredi women, drawing on their professional expertise and acumen. These strategies, I contend, empower women to effect internal transformation within Haredi society:

    a.) Presenting the choice of Haredi Identity as a Mark of Elevated Commitment: By showcasing the deliberate choices they make in adopting specific facets of the Haredi lifestyle, despite potential sacrifices, these pioneers set themselves apart from those who adhere blindly to conventions. This emphasis on autonomy implies that their conscious decisions bolster the solidity of their Haredi identity.

    b.) Embracing Religious Text Studies: Drawing upon their cultivated learning abilities and proficiencies honed through academic and professional pursuits, these innovators foster the confidence to immerse themselves in the traditionally male-dominated realm of Talmudic studies. Within Haredi society, this pursuit is viewed as the epitome of male religious dedication. In engaging with this field, they root their identity in a fundamental value of Haredi culture - learning - without necessarily conforming to entrenched gender hierarchies. This not only underscores their resolute resolve but also their resilience in the face of societal norms, lending them a foundational identity tethered to a core Haredi value - learning - devoid of the typical gender associations.

    c.) Involvement in Community Advocacy: Harnessing their skills and leveraging professional experiences to uplift their immediate society, these pathfinders utilize their resources to advance desired changes within the Haredi community. Whether establishing and overseeing non-profit initiatives or directing communal resources towards Haredi objectives, they demonstrate the intrinsic value of their professional expertise for the community, bolstering the legitimacy of their professional standing while fostering the social transformations they champion.

    d.) Exporting Work Skills Home: Leveraging their professional backgrounds, educational resources, social connections, management skills, and financial means, career women pave the path for upcoming generations by fostering opportunities for both girls and boys while promoting more equitable norms in family and community life within the Haredi society. They do not discard traditional matchmaking practices but seek to leverage them to facilitate the development of more egalitarian relationships. Likewise, they do not abandon gender-segregated educational settings but ensure their daughters can pursue advanced degrees in diverse environments and prestigious institutions.

    By exploring the experiences of ultra-Orthodox women in career development, shaping their religious-social identity, and their engagement in the community and family, the article seeks to contribute to developing three theoretical fields. Firstly, it engages with literature at the intersectionality of gender and religiosity in the workplace, scrutinizing how work encounters mold the religious behaviors of devout women. Existing works on religion and gender in work settings typically emphasize how entrenched religious categories shape the incorporation of women into the workforce and the management of their identities and professional practices within defined religious frameworks. In contrast, our study accentuates the impact of individual professional experiences and identities on the formulation of female religious identities, both among career women themselves as they establish religious signifiers aligning them with Haredi society and at a community level where it broadens the conventional understanding of Haredi female identity beyond their usual activities.

Secondly, the research aligns with literature concerning the agency of religious women, shedding light on additional behavioral patterns that possess the potential for inciting social change within conservative settings that attribute religious importance to women's detachment from power structures and decision-making processes.

    Lastly, the study intersects with the general literature on the societal repercussions of women's employment beyond the workplace, particularly focusing on the spillover effects of work activities on various aspects of life, such as family dynamics and community relations. This contribution aims to enhance our understanding of how women perceive the outcomes of their professional experiences, not just on the financial stability and education of their families, but also the gender dynamics within conservative societal frameworks.

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Self-Actualization as a Religious Imperative in the Business Entrepreneurship of Ultra-Orthodox Women

Nitza Berkovitch, Liron Meisels Baharav

Borrowing insights from scholarship on individualization and drawing on the literature on gender, religion, and entrepreneurship, we ask how religious entrepreneur women interpret their entrepreneurial work, which emphasizes competition, individualism, and risk-taking, within their religious world which sanctifies faith, rejects innovation and upholds conservative and patriarchal values. Specifically, we build on a case study of ultra-Orthodox women entrepreneurs in Israel, examining what kind of subjectivity is formed at the intersection of the two worlds and its implications. 
   The ultra-orthodox society (comprising 12% of the population in Israel), though not homogeneous, all its factions share the core values of faith, community and family, obedience to rabbinical authority, and following religious laws. Unlike other religious-conservative societies, ultra-Orthodox women are expected to work. They have been assigned the role of providing for their families, thus allowing the husbands to devote themselves to religious studies, the highest calling reserved for men alone. This model of the "Society of Learners" (Friedman, 1991), or more correctly, "Society of (Men) Learners" (El-Or 1993), though not followed by all, became its desired ideal. 
   In the last two decades, resulting from the implementation of neoliberal policies and internal changes in ultra-orthodox society, the rate of working ultra-orthodox women has increased to 80%, out of which 12% are entrepreneurs running traditional women's businesses (e.g., cosmetics, selling home goods, wig making (and recently also modern businesses (e.g., graphic design, digital media marketing, tax consulting).
   Two theoretical scholarships provided us with the conceptual tools to understand their world. The first explores current processes of individualization and self-actualization, conceptualizing them as being interconnected, rather than contradicting, with collectivism and communalism and as being of multiple meanings that vary by historical context and social carriers) Ehrenberg, 2014; Beck 2000). The second scholarship studies gender and religion (Mahmood 2006) and their intersection with entrepreneurship (Essers & Benschop, 2007). It highlights the dynamic and intricate processes of religious-entrepreneurial identity formation as manifested among Muslim women in Europe and Christian women of the Pentecostal Church in Africa and the United States. It shows how they constitute an agency while using religious practices and symbols and their entrepreneurial work to expand their freedom of action in business, confront religious authorities, and resist oppressive arrangements at home. 
   We held seven group interviews (5-7 participants in each), and the second author conducted 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews and participated in 15 network group sessions designed for ultra-orthodox women owners of small businesses. We listened carefully to how these women talked about their work, their daily activities, their work history, the decisions they made and actions they took along the way; about the meanings and purpose of their work and the role it plays within their overall life as a business owner, as haredi women, as the provider and primary caretaker of their children. 
   Based on the findings, we advance three arguments. First, business entrepreneurship creates a space for ultra-orthodox women to appropriate individualistic language, with which they establish themselves as agents who make decisions and implement them while dealing with the difficulties and constraints embedded in the entrepreneurial world and the multitude of rules that characterize ultra-orthodox society.
   Second, they mobilize the discourse of self-actualization and place it as the first purpose of their work while translating it into their religious world by assigning it religious legitimacy, defining it as a religious imperative. (It is important to note that we never brought the term up in the interviews.) In addition, while listening carefully, we could also note signs, though faint, of oppositional discourse that resists male power and focuses on their self-actualization as women, divorcing it from the religious meaning discussed before.
   What follows is then, and this is our third argument, they construct their subjectivities employing notions of self-actualization and individualism fused with religiosity, with which they reconcile between their world of faith and their world of business. In that, they undermine the purpose and meaning assigned to their work by the ultra-orthodox leadership. Yet, this does not distance them from ultra-orthodox society and its ideals. First, because, as we noted before, they provide it with a new religious meaning, this time, of their own. Second, the goal of self-actualization, which establishes them as autonomous agents, creates a new motivation for their work that will sustain them in the labor market, even if the economic conditions change. Thus, paradoxically, one of the consequences of this cultural move is that in the name of individualism, one of the fundamental concepts of modernity, they will continue to maintain a "house of Torah" and, as a result, to a large extent the "community of learners" itself.
   Our study contributes to the scholarship of individualization by broadening it to include these new social carriers and the discursive links they tie between their world of high religiosity and individualism, resulting in paradoxical implications. It also expands the body of knowledge that focuses on the intersection of gender and religion with entrepreneurship by placing the ultra-orthodox entrepreneurial feminine self at the center and the cultural work required for its constitution. We show that this encounter opens possibilities for an alternative interpretation of the actions of their entrepreneurial work, as this establishes them as an autonomous agent that simultaneously challenges and reproduce existing hierarchies of male power and religious authority.
   Finally, we contribute to research on ultra-Orthodox society at large and ultra-orthodox working women, in particular, by focusing on women who do entrepreneurial work, a group that has yet to attract much research attention. We show that the unique nature of entrepreneurial work opens possibilities for innovative interpretive work that might have implications for the ultra-orthodox society and Israeli society in general.

 

Keywords: ultra-orthodox women, religiosity, self-actualization, religious entrepreneurial self, business entrepreneurship