With God on their Side: Gender–Religiosity Intersectionality and Women’s Workforce Integration

Abstract

On the basis of a case study of the integration of Haredi Jewish women into the Israeli high-tech industry, we explore how gender–religiosity intersectionality affects ultra-conservative women’s participation in the labor market and their ability to negotiate with employers for corporate work–family practices that address their idiosyncratic requirements. We highlight the importance of pious women’s affiliation to their highly organized religious communities while taking a process-centered approach to intersectionality and focusing on the matrix of domination formed by the Israeli state, employers, and the organized ultra-orthodox community. We dub this set of actors “the unholy-trinity” and argue that it constructs a specific, religion-centric inequality regime that restrains women’s job and earning opportunities. At the same time, the “unholy trinity” also empowers women in their struggle to create a working environment that is receptive to their religiosity and what that commitment demands of them.

Bodies in‐between: Religious women's‐only spaces and the construction of liminal identities

“…However, the low salaries attached to teaching positions, combined with large households and a dwindling number of available jobs within the community, have placed ultra‐Orthodox families at risk of poverty. Furthermore, since the early 2000s, neoliberal reforms have gradually reduced the welfare payments available to ultra‐Orthodox families, thus forcing this community to allow female breadwinners to acquire a better professional education and seek jobs in the secular world, where salaries are higher (Frenkel & Wasserman, 2020).…”

“…The difficulties that professional women encounter when moving between their gender‐traditional religious communities and the modern workplace have been documented in studies focusing on Muslims (Arifeen & Gatrell, 2013; Berger et al., 2017; Essers & Benschop, 2009; Tariq & Syed, 2017), Jews (Baikovich et al., 2022; Frenkel & Wasserman, 2020; Wasserman & Frenkel, 2020; Wasserman & Gabel, 2019), Christians (Gallagher & Smith, 1999), Hindus, and Buddhists (Narayan & Purkayastha, 2009). Since, in most religions, women's behavior is more tightly monitored, regulated, and restricted than that of men, the mere fact of pursuing a career outside community boundaries may violate religious norms and pose challenges to women's religious and professional identities.…”

The Intersectionality of Deservingness for State Support

“…To theorize bureaucrats' responses to the intersection of clients' gender, race, and ethnicity, or, in the Israeli case, gender, nationality, and religiosity (Frenkel and Wasserman 2020), we turn to van Oorschot's (2000, 2006) established framework, which has been shown to consistently account for citizens' compound perceptions of others' deservingness for state welfare support. Moreover, previous studies confirm the relevance of this framework for bureaucratic attitudes and judgments (Jilke and Tummers 2018; Thomann and Rapp 2018).…”

“…Yet, we propose that these uniform classifications mask additional divisions within social groups, based on gender roles and on religiosity (cf. Pfaff et al 2020) that differentiates Jews and Haredi-Jews (Frenkel and Wasserman 2020).…”

Religious Identity and Family Practices in a Post-Communist Society: The Case of Division of Labor in Childcare and Housework

“…The role of religious values and their impact in contemporary societies continue to be the focus of researchers as both institutions go through the changes affected by modernization processes (Ammerman and Roof 1995;Ammons and Edgell 2007). The most recent research into the way religion and family institutions interact focuses on gendering practices and their impact on childcare and housework divisions (Goldscheider et al 2014;May and Reynolds 2018;Perales and Bouma 2019;Frenkel and Wasserman 2020;Gull and Geist 2020).…”