The Background
The Project
The Goals

The Background
Rural Arab women in Israel face discrimination from multiple angels.  The first obstacle they must overcome is the discrimination they face due to their identification as Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship.  Secondly, many of these women also suffer from the marginalization and repression which result from the patriarchal norms often held within the Arab society.  Finally, they live as unskilled workers in a skill-based economy.  In order for these women to achieve meaningful equality within their society, women must participate actively in the Arab workforce and earn a respectable income.  This equality however is rather hard to attain when there is such a low rate of participation in the labor force among Palestinian females aged 15 years and older, which accounts for only 18.9% of the Palestinian community’s total of 42.5%.  This figure is even further exacerbated when compared to the contribution of Jewish females which accounts for 56.2% of the Jewish labor force (RIKAZ, 2007).

The Project
These facts lead Ahali to shift their attention to working women in the Palestinian community.  The Equal Opportunities for Rural Women (EORW) project aims at creating a social and economic equality for women in the Arab Palestinian society in Israel.  Established in 2003 as part of the Arab Farmers Organization, a year later it became an independent project.  The program offers training on economic, commercial, and professional training of women’s groups in rural areas.  With the collaboration of local partners like municipalities or women centers, the staff works towards enabling women to stand on their own and contribute to society’s economic and social development.

In addition to the socio-economic empowerment, this project encourages women to recognize their personal capacities and encourage them to take initiatives in changing their social conditions which confine them to the domestic sphere.  Finally, through this project, women are trained to strengthening their leadership capacities so they can solidly organize and become more involved in all aspects of the public sphere.

Today, more than 14 groups in 13 different villages with over 300 women have completed the EORW training program.  (This number does not include the women who have participated in the Equal Opportunities for Agricultural Women's project.)  Ahali views these groups as the seeds of social activation and transformation in the Palestinian community.

The Goals
The main components of the EORW project are:

• To raise Palestinian women’s personal and social awareness
• To provide entrepreneurial expertise through the acquisition of professional training and skill building
• To offer business management training
• To increase the knowledge of design, packaging and marketing skills of the women
• To encourage social and cultural events
• To encourage the preparation and publicizing of fairs
• To provide individual and collective counseling