Work Values of Working Women in Israel: A Comparison of Haredi Women with Those from the Secular and Traditional Segments

Abstract

The Haredi (or Ultra-Orthodox) sector is the fastest growing population in Israel, but the ability to study their working world is limited, and as far as we know, the work values of Haredi women (who are usually the main breadwinners) have not been studied to date. This unique study compares their work values with those of secular and traditional Jewish-Israeli women. The Meaning of Work (MOW) questionnaire was administered to 467 employed Jewish-Israeli women (309 Secular, 138 Traditional, and 120 Haredi), addressing values, attitudes, and aspirations at the workplace. The findings indicate that, while secular women ascribe more importance to individualistic values related to interesting work and variety than do traditionalist and Haredi women, no significant differences exist among the three groups concerning the interest in good pay, autonomy, interpersonal relations, or job security. In addition, a higher level of religiosity was associated with the importance of convenient hours and inversely associated with the importance of learning new things. Further, Haredi women attribute more importance to promotion and congruence between their personal abilities and experience and the job requirements than did women from the other two groups. Overall, the background demographic variables had little impact on work values. The findings can be explained by the different cultural values (collectivism versus individualism) and the obstacles Haredi women experience in the labor market.

Evidence of construct validity for work values using triangulation analysis

“…The greater, therefore, the agreement between an individual's high importance of aspects of work and the reinforcement of those work aspects in any work context, the more satisfied the individual becomes, and as such, the more likely this individual is to stay in this work context. Thus, the relative importance that individuals place on aspects of work, can be understood as an important prism for examining the interface between individuals and different contexts of work across sectors and cultures (Papavasileiou and Lyons, 2015;Sharabi and Kay, 2023).…”