Girls of Liberty: The Struggle for Suffrage in Mandatory Palestine

Front Cover
Brandeis University Press, Apr 5, 2016 - History - 232 pages
Following the Balfour Declaration and the British conquest of Palestine (1917-1918), the small Jewish community that lived there wanted to establish an elected assembly as its representative body. The issue that hindered this aim was whether women would be part of it. A group of feminist Zionist women from all over the country created a political party that participated in the elections, even before women's suffrage was enacted. This unique phenomenon in Mandatory Palestine resulted in the declaration of women's equal rights in all aspects of life by the newly founded Assembly of Representatives. Margalit Shilo examines the story of these activists to elaborate on a wide range of issues, including the Zionist roots of feminism and nationalism; the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sector's negation of women's equality; how traditional Jewish concepts of women fashioned rabbinical attitudes on the question of women's suffrage; and how the fight for women's suffrage spread throughout the country. Using current gender theories, Shilo compares the Zionist suffrage struggle to contemporaneous struggles across the globe, and connects this nearly forgotten episode, absent from Israeli historiography, with the present situation of Israeli women. This rich analysis of women's right to vote within this specific setting will appeal to scholars and students of Israel studies, and to feminist and social historians interested in how contexts change the ways in which activism is perceived and occurs.
 

Contents

1 Feminism and Its Zionist and Hebrew Roots
1
Local Organization
12
3 The National Campaign Commences
29
The Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights
47
5 One Step Forward Two Steps Back
70
6 The Union Comes of Age
91
7 Five Years of Struggle and a Victory
115
8 Victory and Defeat
135
Notes
145
Bibliography
183
Index
197
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2016)

MARGALIT SHILO is a professor in the Land of Israel Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University and the author of Princess or Prisoner? Jewish Women in Jerusalem, 1840-1914.

Bibliographic information