Abstract
This chapter explores the processes of change initiated by Druze women students in Israel. These transitions were carried out through conduct that was at times compatible and at others incompatible with the Druze tradition and culture. The first students struggled to pave the way for themselves and for other women in the community by defying and changing expected traditional and cultural gender roles and concurrently served as role models by obeying (other) religious and cultural norms. Thereby, they liberated themselves from several cultural and religious norms by observing others.
This chapter will also examine how the interaction with a different culture, lifestyle, and acquired knowledge at Israeli universities reassessed their beliefs, values, and identities. While the benefits of higher education are widely discussed, this chapter focuses on the different, more complex effects of education on the lives and identities of women. The study examines the complex identity patterns of these pioneering women after returning to their villages on completing their studies – influenced by their uniqueness as the first women in their community to achieve academic degrees and by the intercultural transitions they experienced along the way. At times they felt as strangers and immigrants, not only in the foreign culture they were exposed to during their studies at university but also in their own home community. The narrative identity and emotional processes are derived through interview analysis with the first and second “generation” of Druze women that studied in Israeli universities; the findings are viewed in light of modern and postmodern psychological theories of identity.
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- 1.
The term “first women” initially referred to first Druze women who took the extraordinary step of attending university during the beginning of the mid-1980s. The first were young women from Mt. Carmel villages that were only a short distance from the university. During the 1990s also young women from distant village of the Galilee started studying in universities; many had the nearly impossible barrier of reaching home before sunset. Later on, some of the female Druze students were allowed to sleep in dormitories or monasteries in proximity to the universities. Nowadays the number of women Druze students outnumbers that of male (Druze) students.
- 2.
A few were chaperoned by male family members (fathers, brothers, or brothers-in-law) during their stay in university.
- 3.
Kinsmen did not speak to the ostracized family and avoided attending their weddings and funerals. Moreover, as the Druze believe in reincarnation, they avow that one who dies while ostracized will retain that status in lives to come.
- 4.
Such similarities should not engender a monolithic approach toward Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, and Druze, however, as extensive diversity prevails within and among the respective groups.
- 5.
Additional studies conducted in Israel regarding Palestinian women reflect reinforcement of their ethnic-national identity (Masarawa 2002).
- 6.
Other theoreticians echoing Erikson’s principal concepts and ideas will be mentioned as well.
- 7.
For different identity constructs in collective and individualistic societies, see Markus and Kitayama (1994).
- 8.
This position is not exclusive to individual identities in the age of postmodernism and globalization, although it has become more widespread as mobility continues to facilitate cross-cultural contact (Berry 1991; Gergen 1991). Feelings of this type resulting from exposure to different cultures were already mentioned relatively early in the twentieth century by Park (1928, in Berry 1991).
- 9.
Although Druze women wear scarves and not veils, the latter item was discussed for its external resemblance and its similar traditional-social connotations. The scarves, white in color, cover the mouth but leave eyes and nose exposed. Less traditional Druze women wear scarves that cover their hair but not their faces. Many of the younger ones do not wear scarves at all.
- 10.
For the four specific characteristics of the “silent revolution,” see Weiner-Levy ( 2006a ).
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Weiner-Levy, N. (2013). Defying Religion or Changing Through Religion? Shifting Concepts of Religion, Culture, and Self. In: Gross, Z., Davies, L., Diab, AK. (eds) Gender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic Postmodern World. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5270-2_15
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