“A girl's place is in the home”: Spatial gendered scripts in narratives of girls who have left or been pushed out of home

Abstract

Little is known about the unique gendered experiences of runaway and homeless girls. This feminist study approaches the body and movement of these girls as potential sites of social control. We explored whether and how social values and directives that view the home as the proper place for girls are reflected in the narratives of 17 Israeli girls who have left or been pushed out of their homes, based on a critical interpretive analysis. We found evidence of the impact of gendered social control mechanisms in three key experiences of the girls: (a) delaying leaving home, even when suffering within it; (b) maintaining normativity after leaving home; and (c) help and supervision in encounters with professionals. The discussion further explores the impact of gendered social scripts on the girls' experiences both before and after leaving home and on the way in which they are offered and receive professional help. We call on helping professionals to examine critically how hegemonic gendered discourses about domestic and public spaces shape the experiences of these girls and the helping relationship and use these understandings to improve the services offered to them.

Criminalization of Asylum Seekers in Israel: Toward an Agentic Research Perspective that Opposes Othering and Estrangement

“…Another practice of resisting othering is the usage of critical research and the reframing of actions. One such success was gained in the discipline of “girls’ studies” where studies on runaway girls in distress from their homes applied a critical interpretive analysis to reframe their action as rational, thus reconsidering the girls as reasonable, agentic persons (Peled & Komem, 2020 ). Accordingly, agentic research can serve as a tool for resisting othering by reframing social meanings, reconstructing realities and depathologizing actions.…”

Runaway Girls and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A Qualitative Interpretative Meta-Synthesis

“…Helping professionals are often involved in the lives of young people who have run away from home (Kurtz, Lindsey, Jarvis, & Nackrud, 2000;Peled & Komem, 2020). In looking for research to inform practice, one finds that numerous qua-litative studies have examined runaway youth and their choices to leave home, their involvement living on the streets, and their lived experiences as stigmatized youth.…”