Pious Women Challenge Arrangements Anchored in the Dominancy of the Religious Discourse: Druze Women in Israel as a Case Study

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how the agency of religious Druze women in Israel affects professional identity and religious affiliation and how these, in turn, shape the gender religious perception in their community, especially in the fields of education and employment. Through semi-structured interviews with twenty women, the study identifies the factors that promote or inhibit the increasing legitimacy in community religious discourse for the integration of religious women in higher education and quality employment. The main finding of the study is that religious, professionally educated Druze women in Israel direct their agency to a complex and challenging interaction with the modern world. By doing so, these women challenge the boundaries of their ultra-religious community, thereby expanding them. The findings show that educated religious Druze women in Israel reject the binary division between “conservative religious” and “modern” and replace it with different definitions of what is considered religious, conservative, and modern. One of the main insights that emerged from the study is that the women are able to act autonomously to make their choices, acquire education, integrate into the poor local labor market in professional positions, accumulate economic and social resources through their professional and religious status, and negotiate their status in the religious community.

1. Introduction

In recent years, studies about religious women have been focusing on these women’s agency, i.e., their ability to act autonomously even under the limiting conditions dictated by the religious, gender-conservative norms of their environment. This idea is mainly demonstrated through studies about women from ultra-religious groups who combine modern practices and ideas with traditional rules (see, for example, Kook and Harel-Shalev 2020; Stadler and Taragin-Zeller 2017) and of Muslim women who pave their paths in the religious world (Mahmood 2005) and in their familial–communal environment (Abu-Lughod 1985; Zion-Waldoks 2015). Research into the agency of ultra-religious women in the labor market, and particularly their career development options, is still at an early stage (see, for example: Gharaibeh 2015; Raz and Tzruya 2018; Frenkel and Wasserman 2020). This is true even though many of these women are employed and develop professional careers and despite the acknowledged financial contribution of women’s employment, particularly that of religious women (Acker 2006).

The current paper focuses on the case study of pious Druze women in Israel who develop a professional career based on higher education.1 The study is based on critical feminist theory, focusing on the dialectics between patriarchal, class, and national oppression on the one hand and women’s agency on the other. These dialectics are examined in the public sphere, where state institutions promote unequal policy, combining gender with other power mechanisms, such as the ethno-national order (Sa’ar and Younis 2021). Based on this analytic framework, I will argue that pious professional Druze women’s agency is located on the spectrum between rejecting religious rules and regulations in favor of their professional advancement and the attempts to maintain their religious identity and belonging to their religious community.2

Despite common prejudices, in many ways, the Druze religion promotes gender equality in various aspects. Thus, for example, parents are required to educate their sons and daughters alike, and men and women have almost equal rights in terms of personal status, including the right to file for divorce and the right for inheritance (Abu-Zaki 1997).3 Yet, the practicality of women’s rights in Druze society reflects the dominancy of the patriarchal order beyond the formal religious rules. Hence, there is a wide gap between theory and practice in Druze religion, and the daily reality of Druze women is extremely different from the egalitarian ideal of religious rules. Thus, for instance, women who demand their inheritance rights are excommunicated by their original families (Abu-Rokon 1997); when they defy social codes, they become the target of harsher shaming and social sanctions compared to men, which sometimes even lead to murder, despite the general religious prohibition on taking another human’s life (Hasan 2002). The Druze scriptures emphasize modesty, leading Druze women to stay in the private sphere, only leaving their home communities when they are escorted by a male who is considered their Mahram (is a man in the status father, husband, brother, son, nephew, or uncle). The idea of Mahram is based on the assumption that women are weak and cannot take care of themselves and, therefore, need the men in their family to escort and protect them, and so the prohibition on women to leave their village without a Mahram is a religious order like any other (this is more related to Halal and forbidden). These limitations hold back the integration of Druze women in academia compared to the general population as well as to Muslim and Christian Arab women in Israel. Thus, for example, in 2011, the rate of educated Druze women in Israel was 10.4%, which was lower than the rate of Muslim and Christian women (12.1% and 18.1%, respectively) (Barakat 2021).

As mentioned, the patriarchal structure of Druze society intersects with religious rules, further limiting women’s independence and mobility. Until the 1990s, Druze women were not allowed to drive, and religious parents of non-religious women who defied this prohibition had been banned from the religious community. The religious ban on the parents mean they are not allowed to read the scriptures or pray in the Hilwe (the Druze house of prayer),4 and the prayer of the dead cannot be read for them—a severe sanction, which affects Druze social as well as spiritual–religious status (for further details see Barakat 2021, 2022). While Druze women have managed to change some of the religious prohibitions (today, “only” religious women are forbidden from driving), and while only a minority (around 15% of the population is considered religious), the Druze tradition still controls every life aspect of the individual in the Druze community, men and women alike. These religious regulations are enforced mainly on religious men and women, who are subordinated to both cultural–normative and organizational control mechanisms, including formal sanctions and rewards. Yet, it should be mentioned that Druze become religious out of their own free choice, and the religious ideology suggests that this choice should be made freely without coercion of any kind. Thus, even men and women who grew up in religious families are required, at the age of 15, to decide if they want to remain religious.5 Belonging to the Druze religion is thus perceived as an autonomous choice made based on internal desire and faith, which embodies an acceptance of the limitations dictated by this choice, including limited mobility and financial independence, religious practices, and modest attire. Hence, the concept of choice in this paper reflects the point of view of pious Druze women: From their perspective, they choose to obey religious rules and communal expectations and willingly accept the supervision mechanism enacted only on religious women.

While Druze society has been transforming in recent decades, it is still considered to be relatively conservative when it comes to women’s education and employment. Pious Druze women who choose to pursue an academic degree and high-quality jobs embody the conflict between maintaining their religious identity and practices that are perceived as modern. The current research, thus, examines the agency of women trying to find the middle ground between religiosity with modernism.

The research combines insights from two key theoretical schools in gender sociology and anthropology. The first school is intersectionality theory, which acknowledges the heterogeneity of social and gender categories, focusing on the interaction between different oppressive inequality mechanisms, including class, gender, and race. Thus, this theory acknowledges the varied experiences of women from different groups, particularly minorities (Collins 1990; Shields 2008; Choo and Ferree 2010; Sa’ar 2016; Yonay and Kraus 2017). The second theoretical school focuses on the relations between gender, religiosity, and feminism (Mahmood 2005; Thomas and Brah 2011; Avishai et al. 2015; Zion-Waldoks 2015; Frenkel and Wasserman 2020).

Inspired by Saba’ Mahmood (2005), I will argue that educated, professional pious Druze women direct their agency toward a complex interaction with the modern world, towing the fine line between religious and modern practices, thus reaffirming this line while also challenging and stretching it. In other words, professional religious Druze women act within their community to expand their personal choice options. They create a complicated reality, which is both religious and modern, within their religious, conservative community.

The paper starts with current data about Druze society in Israel, focusing on its characteristics as an ultra-religious community and the religious identity of pious Druze women. Then, I present a review of the theoretical literature that explores the meaning of agency in the context of gender and religion and the complexity of “choice” in feminist discourse. The next section presents the qualitative research methods, the research population and ethical issues I faced in this research, followed by the findings section, which presents the main themes that emerged from the analysis of the interviews, and finally, a conclusion section is presented.

The main purpose of this paper is to present the intersecting positions of Druze women who are both pious and educated professionals. To achieve this goal, I will develop an analytical tool that rejects the binary distinction between “religious conservative” and “modern”, presenting alternative definitions of religious, traditional, modern, and secular. Using this tool, I will examine the agency of pious Druze women, thus revealing the affinities between the intersecting fields of professional identity and religious affiliation. Based on interviews with pious and educated women, I will present the strategies they use to preserve their complex, multiple identities—as academics, professionals, and religious—discussing the relationships between their practices and their perceptions of religious identities.

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Druze Women in Israel: Gender, Religion, and Career

The Druze community in Israel includes around 147,000 people, which are 1.6% of the general population and 7.6% of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Druze in Israel reside in two main areas: Most of them (81%) are centered in the Northern District (The Galilee mountains, the Golan heights) while the rest (19%) reside in Haifa District (The Carmel mountains) (Central Bureau of Statistics 2021).6

Since the State of Israel was established, the Israeli governments have been implementing a “divide and conquer” policy, as well as cooptation policy, shaping the Druze as a unique community, distinct from both Jewish and Arab sectors (Bauml 2007). This policy is reflected in the Law of Security Service (1949), which was applied to the Druze community since 1956 (Kimhai 2011),7 as well as the independent religious status of the Druze sector, including its own Shar’i court and education system, distinct from that of the Arab education system, which includes both Muslims and Christians. Furthermore, the state’s recognition of the Druze religious council as a political institution prevented the development of any other political representative entity of the Druze in Israel, and so, in practice, the state controls the Druze community through its religious leadership, which is composed solely of religious men. This policy affected Druze women by isolating them from Muslim and Christian Palestinian women and blocking the possibility of cooperation between them on various issues, among other things, the confrontation of Palestinian women as a collective with the state that discriminates against them and the male patriarchy in culture (Barakat et al. 2018).

The definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state inherently implies the superiority of Jewish religion and population while excluding non-Jews. The state grants minorities internal religious autonomy, which means that male and female members of minority groups, who are supposedly defined as equal citizens, are, in fact, controlled by their patriarchal religious elite (Karayanni 2022). The state of Israel marginalizes minority groups, and particularly the Palestinian population, under the disguise of liberal, multi-cultural policy (ibid). Accordingly, religious Druze leaders act autonomously within the Druze community: They dictate the code of conduct for the religious community, casting a ban8 on anyone who defies it. Religious leaders deny religious women’s right for education or driving a car, and women who defy their authority are often excluded from their religious affiliation (for more details see: Barakat et al. 2018).

The commitment of Druze religious women to the religious rules is reflected in daily practices, such as modest attire, gender separated employment, lack of independent mobility, participating in religious–social events, and more. As mentioned, beyond the prohibition on driving, religious women are not allowed to leave their villages without the escort of a Mahram (a first-degree male relative). In recent decades, the attitudes toward women’s education have been under transformation. Until the mid-1990s, religious leaders would pressure parents of non-religious single women who had integrated into the Israeli academia, trying to bring the parents into convincing their daughters to drop out of school. The opposition to women’s education was mainly explained by their presence in a gender-mixed environment. To prevent women from integrating into academia, the leaders would cast a religious ban on the religious parents. In most cases, only the mothers of those single (non-religious) women were religious while most of the fathers were not religious, and most of the mothers accepted the ban and allowed their daughters to continue their studies.9 Thanks to those mothers who accepted the religious ban for the duration of their daughters’ studies, the young women were able to gain higher education. When the religious leaders saw that the mothers’ ban was no longer effective, they stopped casting it (Barakat 2021). Yet, a religious ban is still casted against religious women who gain higher education, and so, some of the women opt for gaining higher education before joining the religious group. Religious women who grew up in a religious household or chose to join the religion at a relatively early age cannot continue their religious lifestyle while studying for an academic degree, as religious leaders prevent them from doing so by casting a ban and expelling them from the religious group for the duration of their studies. Despite these sanctions, pious and traditional religious women still choose to gain higher education, integrate into the labor market, and only then go back and join the religious group. Their choice is accompanied by a deep and complex conflict as well as constant negotiation with the religious community.

The rate of Druze students in Israeli universities is 1.8%, somewhat higher compared to their rate in the general population (1.6%) %); 65% of Druze undergraduate and graduate students are women (Central Bureau of Statistics 2021). While Druze women are more educated than men, their participation rate in the labor market is only around 34.5%, much lower than that of Druze men (61.2%). These widescale gender gaps are also common in the Muslim population in Israel, with women’s and men’s participation rate in the labor market being 25.3% and 52.4%, respectively, as well as the Christian–Arab population, with labor participation rates of 49.2% among women compared to 63.8% among men. By comparison, the participation rate of Jewish women in the labor market is 83%—much higher compared to Muslim, Christian, and Druze women and closer to the rate among Jewish men (88%) (Central Bureau of Statistics 2018, 2021). The low employment rates of women from minority groups in Israel are described in the literature as a result of long-term structural and political barriers (Khattab and Miaari 2013; Yonay and Kraus 2017), one of them being the low opportunity financial enclaves in which these women live. The mainstream labor market in Israel includes mostly work environments that refrain from hiring Arabs or only hire a few of them. This market is characterized by covert or overt racism, which is one of the main barriers preventing Palestinian women from integrating into the national labor market, alongside poor Hebrew, social isolation, and a hostile work environment, particularly at times of political tension (Sa’ar and Younis 2021).

Druze society is divided between religious and non-religious groups. Around 15% of the Druze belong to the religious group, which includes both pious and traditionally religious members. The differences between them are reflected in daily religious practices, with external marking of a strict modest dress code for the pious group.10 In terms of religious practices, the pious Druze men and women read often in the scriptures, particularly on Sundays and Thursdays, unlike traditional Druze, who can read the scriptures once every three months. The pious Druze convene in small groups while maintaining gender separation to read and study religion. It should be mentioned that Druze religious women, whether they are pious or traditional, choose to be religious, accepting the prohibitions against driving a car or studying in academia; these prohibitions do not apply to religious men. And so, as mentioned, a woman who breaks the education prohibition is exposed to a religious ban and is not considered religious, at least until she completes her studies. After graduating, as an educated, religious women, she is expected to integrate into the local labor market within the Druze rural sphere. Notably, in some Druze villages, there is more than one Hilwe (Druze house of prayer), and Druze religious leaders present varied attitudes toward women’s education. Some may accept student religious women into their congregation, allowing women to avoid the ban by transitioning between Hilwes in the same village. In some cases, this status of religious women in academia creates a third form of religiosity: women who maintain the pious modesty dress code but frequent the Hilwe according to the traditional standards. The current study is based on the theoretical assumption that political, social, financial, and personal contexts (personal capital) are critical in designing the modern shapes of piety (Zion-Waldoks 2015). Hence, the life reality of religious women should be explored based on the intersecting positions of their identity. Based on this assumption, I will examine the ways by which Druze religious women integrate into modern life and their complex negotiation with their religious communities to realize their religious and professional identity.

2.2. Agency, Gender, Religion, and Nationality

Lois McNay (2000) defined “agency” as the ability to act autonomously under conditions of cultural sanctions and structural inequality. Agency has been extensively discussed in feminist research (see, for example: Butler 1990; Davies 1991; McNay 2000), originally focusing mainly on resolving the conflict between individual action and oppressive patriarchy (Hekman 1995). In this spirit, post-colonial feminism highlighted the problematic nature of liberal feminism, which only recognizes certain types of agency, mainly those that lead to liberation from the patriarchy (see, for example: Mohanty 1984; Suleri 1992; Narayan 1997; Abu-Lughod 2002).

Orit Avishai (2008) distinguishes between four types of women’s agency regarding religion and gender. The first type includes subversive resistance practices of religious women who try to challenge or change a specific aspect of religion (Bayes and Tohidi 2001; Gerami and Lehnerer 2001; Salime 2011). The second type is empowerment agency, which refers to religious women who appropriate authority of scriptures, reinterpreting religious doctrine or practices, thus experiencing empowerment in their daily lives (Rose 1987; Ozorak 1996; Brasher 1998; Beaman 2001; Wolkomir 2004; Elson 2007). The third type is instrumental agency, which focuses on the non-religious results of religious practices rather than on emotional empowerment (Davidman 1991; Jalal 1991; Mir 2009). With the fourth type, compliance agency, women strive to achieve non-religious goals, such as financial independence, development of political ideologies, cultural belonging, and more. This last type expands the concept of agency to include traditional women, focusing on the diverse ways by which these women expand their sphere of action, for instance, through the free choice of actions that align with religious rules and regulations (Bracke 2003; Mahmood 2005; Hoyt 2007; Avishai 2008; Bauman 2008; Bilge 2010).

Kelsie Burke (2012) pointed out the inappropriacy of classifying agency styles based on their effectivity and ability to expand freedom of action. According to Burke, this classification catalogues agency in dichotomic templates, creating homogenization and “otherness” that do not align with post-colonial feminism. Similarly, it was argued that researchers who focus on the relationship between Islam and gender over-amplify the role of Islam in women’s complicated life (Shaheed 1999). Feminist research that examines the identities of religious women compared to non-religious women, it is argued, is limited in its understanding of other life aspects (Bilge 2010). Hence, religiosity should be considered as one identity of women out of many, and its relationship with other identities (womanhood, professionalism, motherhood, spinsterhood, nationality, and more) should be explored. Furthermore, it should be remembered that religiosity is embedded in modern social, financial, and employment contexts, with mutual relations between them. Secular modern discourses and religious discourses do not necessarily oppose each other or must be differentiated from each other. In fact, in some cases, they actually resonate with each other (Kook and Harel-Shalev 2020; Deeb 2009; Hafez 2011).

Earlier research on gender–religiosity intersectionality in organizational studies demonstrated how gender-related religious practices, such as wearing the Muslim headscarf (Hijab) or imposing a gender-segregating screen (Purdah) reinforce professional women’s marginalization and discrimination (Tariq and Syed 2018). Others examined coping strategies of Muslim women with their communities, exploring the oscillation between compliance and resistance vis-à-vis ethno-religious authority figures (Essers and Benschop 2007).

Their strive for more financial autonomy encourages pious women to gain education and integrate into the labor market, but they must search for employment spheres that align with the religious requirements of them, particularly in terms of modesty and gender segregation. These choices may exact a toll in terms of these women’s employment. Thus, for instance, a study about the integration of ultra-orthodox Jewish women in the high-tech industry argued that these women are subordinated to a threefold regiment—the state, the religious community, and their work organization (Frenkel and Wasserman 2020). This regiment, which Frenkel and Wasserman described as the “unholy trinity”, is manifested in unequal pay, rights, and promotion opportunities of ultra-orthodox women compared to their colleagues. To preserve their religious identity in the secular workplace and gain approval from their religious institutions and communities, those women integrate in the high-tech industry as a collective, i.e., as contract workers, while employers allocate different workspaces for them, allowing them to maintain their religious laws and practices. Yet, this unique arrangement also allows ultra-orthodox women in high-tech to settle their two identities—the religious one and the professional one—presenting a source of empowerment and agency.

The current study focuses on the individual agency of pious Druze women and particularly in practices directed toward gaining higher education and integrating the labor market. I will try to show how these women shape and organize their religious, educational, and professional identities when facing their religious leaders, religious community, the Israeli academia and their low-opportunity employment sphere. Druze women who are both pious and educated-professionals are thus located in unique employment spheres, which are discriminative and low in opportunities, but still allowing for agency. In other words, the women’s choices and their practices of negotiation with their religious community dictate a new socio-religious order that matches their choices as professional and religious women. To develop this argument, I wish to examine the term “choice” in feminist writing.

2.3. The Concept of “Choice” in Feminist Writing

Choice is a common concept in both capitalist society and feminist discourse. The financial and social reality characteristic of the neo-liberal age was created due to the reduction of the state’s welfare policy, and leads underprivileged groups, including women, to view their social and financial struggles as individual and based on their personal traits (Bulbeck and Harris 2008). In the same context, Anita Harris (2008) argues that even young feminist women are affected by neo-liberal views and perceive themselves as individuals with an autonomous, rational ability to make choices based on their own priorities. Nevertheless, liberal feminism refers to women’s “choices” with suspicion and doubts their autonomy to make them, particularly when these choices align with male-approved or socially conforming behaviors (Mathieu 1990).

One example is a study that examined the feminist perceptions of women from three different generations. This study showed that while women in the middle generation perceived their integration into the labor market as a necessary means for reducing gender inequality, their daughters tended to refrain from salaried jobs when they became mothers, viewing it as their free choice, regardless of the traditional gender role division. According to the young mothers, it was a choice that allowed them to experience their motherhood and celebrate it as an alternative for material, consumeristic employment (Stevenson et al. 2011).

A similar example is provided by a study that showed that young women refer to motherhood, domestic work division, and domestic violence as issues that reflect individual choice rather than power relations. Processes that detain and discriminate against women are reinforced through the politics of “choice”, which relies on post-industrial individualization theories and the combination of neo-liberalism with liberal versions of feminism (Baker 2007). These changes in perceptions that relate to gender inequality reflect broader perceptional changes, including the tendency to view poverty and misfortune as a result of individual choice rather than a non-egalitarian social order (Beck 2000).

The issue of women’s choice was also discussed by post-colonial feminists. In this context, it was argued that “choice” is a relative term, dependent on cultural, social, and religious context. Women have choices and leeway even within the patriarchal structure (Narayan 2001). This approach recognizes the various levels of women’s autonomy and respect their different choices, even those that are considered oppressive, victimizing, or passive by Western feminist perceptions (Abu-Rabia-Queder 2010; Herzog 2009).

In the current study, I present the choices and agency of religious, educated Druze women who strive to preserve their religious identity while also integrating into the local labor market, particularly in light of the skimp opportunities available for them in the rural sphere.

3. Methodology

The study was based on semi-structured interviews. For the semi-structured interviews, I combined an organized structure of questions with a flexible conversation. The interviews included minimal intervention by the researcher, allowing the interviewees to raise additional issues based on the general direction. Every interview included the following questions or directives: Tell me about your faith; what is the meaning of your religiosity?; tell me about your career; how do you settle between your career and being religious?; what are the main tensions around your career?; how do you deal with those tensions?

Twenty Druze religious women were interviewed between 2019–2020. The women came from both the Galilee and the Carmel regions and were traced using the “snowball” methodology. The interviewees’ age ranged between 20 and 50; 13 of them defined themselves as pious, and 7 defined themselves as traditional. As for their education, 8 interviewees had a graduate degree (in psychology, law, physiotherapy, management, and more); 8 had an undergraduate degree (in education, engineering, or art); and 4 had an engineering diploma (architecture or software). In terms of family status, 14 of the interviewees were married with children, three were married without children, and the other three were single. Four of the interviewees transitioned between Hilwes to avoid the religious ban while six had to accept the ban because their religious leaders were inflexible. Two of the women gained education while their community was ignorant of it. The other eight studied in academia before joining the religious group. After completing their education, all of the women rejoined the religious group and continued to maintain a religious lifestyle.

The interview language was chosen by the interviewee—mostly in Arabic and sometimes in a mix between Arabic and Hebrew. Ten women chose to conduct the interview in their homes while the rest of their families were away, allowing for a comfortable and open atmosphere. The other ten interviewees chose to be interviewed in their offices or in a cafe. My identity as a Druze woman enabled the interviews to develop fairly quickly, creating a conversation based on trust, sharing, mutuality, and empathy. The encounter between me, as a native researcher, and the personal narratives of professional pious Druze women is a political encounter, which is the subject of feminist, critical, and political interpretation.

Research ethics were secured by explaining the research goals and signing an informed consent form to protect their anonymity; the personal details of the interviewees were omitted from the paper. All interviewees are presented under pseudonyms; their villages and familial status were omitted as well as other revealing details.

The interview contents were analyzed based on Strauss’ (1987) coding and analysis stages. During the first stage—open coding—I traced and defined primary categories based on the most common themes in the interviews. The second stage—axial coding—included coding the data based on the primary categories and then redefining and characterizing them using more detailed and accurate categories. In the third stage—selective coding—I coded the data based on the new categories to increase the findings’ internal validity. In the fourth stage, I arranged the categories by hierarchies, prioritizing the “core categories” based on three criteria: The total number of statements in the category, number of interviewees, and the connection between the category and relevant ideas and themes. Finally, I combined the findings to the relevant literature, forming general insights from the case study.

4. Findings

The interviews yielded two main themes: The first theme revolves around the actions by which the interviewees deal with the internal conflict between two critical decisions—gaining academic education and being part of the religious group. The second theme focuses on the ways that allow these women to combine their professional identity and career on the one hand and their religious identity, reflected in their belonging to the religious community, on the other.

4.1. The Conflict between Gaining Academic Education and Belonging to the Religious Community

Druze religious women who strive to achieve what is perceived as impossible in their society—gaining higher education while maintaining their religious identity—manage to challenge religious leaders in various ways. Hurria is a pious woman with a high-quality academic education who grew up in a religious family and joined the religious group when she was 15. In her interview, she told me:

My mother is a religious woman, and she raised us the same way […], during my undergraduate degree, I was banned from the Hilwe, they cased a religious ban on me […] it was extremely tough […] at first, I considered dropping out, but it was my father who encouraged me […] I got used to it […] after graduating, I went for a graduate degree before rejoining the religious group […] [the whole time] I still wore the religious outfit. I never took off my Futa [head cover] […] I continued dressing exactly the same way because I believe in it […] once I finished school, I rejoined the religious group.

Like to Hurria, most of the participants in the current study had joined the religious group before they turned 18, and so, their religious identity was shaped and formed before their university years. These women pointed out the price they were forced to pay due to their insisting on higher education. Their faith and their desire to belong to the religious community collide with the religious leaders’ intention to keep religious women in the private and village sphere. Hence, religious leaders use their authority to cast a religious ban on religious women who study for higher education. Since the religious ban is limited to the duration of their studies, the women accept this “detention” of their official religious identity, as they can restore it after their graduation. Like Hurria, the rest of the interviewees also said they chose to keep their religious appearance during their studies despite being officially, publicly, and practically excluded from their religious community. This choice positioned them in a liminal space, where they did not belong to the religious community, nor to any other non-religious group. This liminal space was pre-defined as temporary, until they finish their academic studies and rejoin to the religious camp. Religious leaders justify this sanction by the fact that the academic institutions are located in a non-Druze area and require women to be exposed to men who are not of Mahram status. Yet, the same sanction is applied to women who study in gender-segregated programs or institutions. Furthermore, when those educated women return to the religious group after graduation, they are required to work within the Druze village.

Yet, from the point of view of the religious women, this choice allows them to expand their options of development and advancement, not just in terms of religious spiritual knowledge, but also in terms of academic education, which can lead them to personal development and financial independence. While their choice is not “free” according to the concepts of liberal feminism, as they still pay a price for it (by accepting the religious ban and being excluded from any religious practices for the duration of their studies), for the women, this is an extremely important choice.

It should be noted that while the women in the current study did not obey religious leaders, they did not view their academic studies as a source of power and subjectivity, but rather as a required condition for professional employment. Some of the women even stressed that the religious ban made them consider dropping out of school. They decided to continue due to their ambition to develop a professional career that would be combined with their religious identity. A testimony of this aspiration is reflected in the interview of ‘Abla, a single, pious women who graduated from a university. She told me:

I belonged to the religious group since I was 14 […] my mom and dad are not religious […] my parents didn’t care I joined the religious group, but they did want me to get an academic degree […] I started studying in a University institution, and continued to visit the Hilwe and read the scriptures until a group of religious leaders published a pamphlet that was also read at our Hilwe: “religious women who study in the academia defy the religious rules, and so, they will be excluded from the Hilwe” […] […] I was banned from the Hilwe. It was a huge trauma […] the wife of the Sais [the religious leader] turned to me in the Hilwe, in front of all the women, and asked me to leave the Hilwe immediately […] there was turmoil […] I wrote to the Sais and his wife, I said I was studying in the university to get a degree and go back to work in my own community […] I didn’t wait for their response, and came back to the Hilwe. When the Sais’ wife noticed me, she turned to me and said: “We read your letter and we have been extremely moved, but we can’t change the rule”, and she asked me, again, to leave the Hilwe […]. They banned me from visiting the Hilwe and reading the scriptures […] but I continued to read them at home, together with other women who were banned due to their studies. The gathering and reading were a secret. Even our parents didn’t know.

The power relations within the Druze religious community are extremely complicated. The Hilwe Sais is the highest authority, and normally, men and women cannot challenge his decisions, fearing a religious ban. Interestingly, in ‘Abla’s narrative, the Sais’ wife, who leads the women in the community (in other cases, it could be the Sais’ mother), enforces his decision but still expresses sympathy toward the women who are being hurt by it. In most Druze villages, the Hilwe Sais and his wife view themselves as the religious gatekeepers and treat the education of Druze religious women with criticism, particularly as past experience shows that the ban does not stop women from studying. As suggested by ‘Abla’s narrative (as well as another interview), some of the women who are banned from religion due to their studies secretly continue to read the scriptures, thus creating an alternative, secretive female sphere where they read the scriptures together and even try to offer some interpretations, although interpretation of the scriptures is considered a sin.11

Despite being banned from religion during their studies, mainly due to the rigorous attitude of their local religious leaders, all interviewees wore a full religious attire during their interviews, signaling their religious identity. Their insistence on maintaining a religious identity in the public sphere despite being banned from religion marks the borders for both Druze and others. Specifically, it allows them to tie modesty together with their religious belonging, thus signaling to the local religious leader that they do not accept his decision and oppose his attempts to take away their right to belong to the religious community.

In some Druze villages in the Galilee and in the Carmel region, there is more than one Hilwe. The leading Sheikhs (the religious leaders) often come from different Hamulas (extended families), who compete with each other at political, social, and religious levels (for more details see: Barakat et al. 2018). In such cases, Sheikhs sometimes dispute each other concerning the issue of women’s education, which enables women to transfer to a Hilwe that would allow them to study without suffering from a religious ban. Nisrin, a pious woman, single and employed, told me:

When I started studying in the university, there was no problem. But after less than six months, the Sais of the Hilwe, on a Thursday prayer, called religious women who study in the academia to choose between their religious belonging and their studies […] I moved to another Hilwe, where the Sais accepts religious women who study […] My father didn’t like this transition. He started admonishing me, telling me: “You belong to this Hilwe since childhood, why are you moving all of a sudden?” I answered: “But the Sheikh keeps asking women who study to leave the Hilwe” […] I see no religious problem with my studies as a religious woman […] I know there is a problem of no gender separation, but in this day and age, where can you find gender separation? […] let’s take a walk: There is no separation in the village, there is no separation in the markets […] transferring to a different Hilwe was not easy. My whole family continue to pray in the Hilwe I left, and I don’t know the women in the new Hilwe […] I felt like a stranger who does not belong, but it was better than being excluded from religious practices.

Nisrin, in her narrative, demonstrates one of the main tensions experienced by Druze women who wish to study in the academia: They want to avoid the threat of a religious ban, but transferring between Hilwes creates a feeling of estrangement and might also create a distance between them and their Hamulas. Furthermore, transitioning between Hilwes does not liberate them from patriarchal religious authority; it only replaces the patriarch with one that is a stranger to them in terms of Hamula and family. This sense of estrangement that was described by Druze women also characterizes the life of Arab–Palestinian women in Israel when they are married to a man from a different Hamula, particularly during municipal elections (Yahia-Younis and Herzog 2005) or when they move to their husbands’ village after being married (Abou-Tabickh 2013). Being part of a family/Hamula in the Arab–Palestinian society in Israel as well as in Arab society in the Middle East in general is a critical part of one’s social capital, as the families/Hamulas hold diverse political, religious, financial, and social statuses, and it also reflects the structure of patriarchal connectivity (Joseph 1993). This structure “ties” the women to their original families, making them feel like strangers when they meet other Hamulas within their community. Yet, the married women in the current study mentioned they pray in a different Hilwe than that of their husbands. One of them is Wafa’, a pious married woman. She told me about a dispute among religious leaders concerning her professional work. To preserve her religious status while also developing professionally, she specifically chose a Hilwe that allows her to combine the two:

My husband prays in one Hilwe, while I pray in another. I can’t accept the standards dictated by the Sais in my husband’s Hilwe […] he is strict in everything. The Hilwe I pray in is more moderate in some respects. It’s not like they are liberal in their interpretation […] but they give me the option of being a pious woman while also making my own choices as an educated woman […] I want to commit to the religious rules, but also realize myself in my career.

As can be seen, the educated pious women negotiate with their husbands, fathers, and religious communities to expand their opportunities in career development and create a new reality in Druze society. They use their opportunities to blur the boundaries between the pious community and what is considered modern, between religious conservativism and career as a path for self-realization. These women are unwilling to give up their identity as religious women and their belonging to the religious group due to their education and career ambitions, but they are willing to abandon the Hilwe that is identified with their Hamula. Hence, they achieve their ambitions in exchange for some of their social capital, which is mainly formed by blood relations or Hamula-patriarchal ties (Joseph 1993, 2000); the interviewees in the current study mentioned that they had challenged their parents and their husbands by transferring from their Hamula’s Hilwe to another. We may assume that this transition challenges the patriarchal connectivity, which caused their fathers to admonish them even though they maintained their religion. The multiplicity of Hilwes in some of the Druze villages expands women’s leeway and facilitates a solution to their religion–education tensions.

To sum up, religious Druze women in this study emphasized their desire to maintain their religious identity while still developing and gaining education in order to integrate in the labor market. This combination exacts a high toll. Some of the women suffered a religious ban during their studies, forcing them to suspend their religious identity. Others had to be estranged when transferring between Hilwes in order to avoid a ban and maintain their religious belonging. These practices suggest that religious Druze women pave their path for higher education through daily assertive actions. In the next section, I will present the choices and actions taken by these women to combine their religious identity with their professional one.

4.2. Bringing Two Worlds Together: Developing a Professional Identity While Maintaining Religious Identity

As mentioned, Druze women’s employment and workspace are limited by various barriers, which combine national–political mechanisms (Yonay and Kraus 2017) alongside patriarchal–social (Abu-Rabia-Queder 2017) and religious ones. These barriers are particularly relevant for Druze pious women who strive to develop their careers. The findings suggest that the intersecting oppression axes experienced by pious women of minority groups push them to think and create alternatives so they can develop their careers without jeopardizing their religious belonging.

Wafa’, who works as a lawyer and had to transfer to another Hilwe, told me that to realize her professional ambitions, she also had to create a work environment appropriate of her religious status:

I made sure that my front wall was made of glass. Anyone who walks by can see who is sitting in my office and what I’m doing in the office […] on one hand, there is privacy, but on the other, I send a message of transparency […] the windows show to the outside world who is sitting in my office and what we are doing… The office’s special design was based on a fear that I will be caught somehow […] my reputation is important to me, my legitimacy in the eyes of the religious community and religious leaders, but I still want to continue practice [my profession…] when I accept a male client, there is no problem, because everyone on the street can see the inside of my office. This was also a solution to the Mahram issue […] we are transparent, there is nothing to hide. I am accepted and appreciated by our society, and particularly the Druze community.

Like Wafa’, other interviewees who works with male clients mentioned their negotiation with the religious community, and particularly religious leaders, to solve the Mahram problem and allow them to develop professionally. Raja, a married professional, told me she quit her job in a professional firm and started working as a consultant for a corporation, which allows her to work mostly from her home. This way, she can develop her career while also preserving her pious identity and religious belonging. Religious women who study untraditional fields (as they are perceived in Druze society) try to reshape the boundaries between religiosity and conservativism to preserve their two identities, the religious one and the professional one. The strategy described in Wafa’s narrative resonates the attempts of workplaces with hierarchical gender relations to prevent sexual harassments by designing see-through offices (Paron-Wildes and Simoneaux 2019). It should be mentioned that Wafa’ is the only pious Druze woman who appears before the court wearing the religious Druze attire and maintains a religious way of life based on the strictest practices.

Pious religious women who work as salaried employees in their village negotiate with their Druze employers to adjust their work environment to the religious laws concerning work hours and Mahram. Nur, who is relatively pious,12 has an undergraduate degree and works for an outsourcing company directed specifically for the integration of underrepresented populations. She told me:

In our job, we have morning and evening shifts. The evening shifts work with employees in the US, and so I had to stay there until midnight, which was difficult as a religious woman. I always had to make sure there were two other women in my shift, and find a Mahram who would take me home […] at first, my parents struggled to accept this reality […] but they realized I had no other option, I was out of job for a year […] the work manager, a Druze man, understands my concerns […] in some cases, I was the only woman in the shift, and so I asked to stop working and went home, I didn’t stay alone with men in the same space […] you know, in our society, one woman with a group of men is unacceptable, even if she is not religious, and of course, when she is.

Nur’s employer is a relatively new business–social venture, which aims to find jobs for peripheral Israelis, particularly Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews. The company’s multiculturalism and diversity policy “require” the employers to be flexible in adjusting the workspace to the workers’ religious identity in terms of work hours and gender concerns. While companies like this one provide work opportunities for young men and women from underprivileged populations, like Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews, they might also “manipulate” this adjustment to direct these populations, and particularly conservative women, to outsourcing companies with less advantageous conditions (Sa’ar and Younis 2021; Frenkel and Wasserman 2020).

Most of the research participants said they maneuver between their religious and professional identities, trying to maintain both. That is, they operate between the various intersecting axes, creating action spaces for themselves.

Yet, one participant told me an uncharacteristic story of how she gave up her career to maintain her religious belonging. Nada, a pious woman who studied engineering, told me:

I worked as a teacher and mentor for industry initiatives in the Technological academic center. Most of my students were male high schoolers. They approached me with various issues, particularly personal ones, which put me in an awkward position as a religious woman […] I had to meet with parents, particularly fathers. Before I became part of the religious group, I had no problem being with a father and his son in a room […] I would drive to work by car, because there is no suitable public transportation from my village to Haifa and the other village where I worked […]. After I decided to become religious, I quit my job as a teacher and mentor […] I moved to this village after being married, so I have no Mahram in the village besides my husband […] we live at the outskirts of the village, and I need a ride to get to school […] as a religious woman, I gave up my driving license. I don’t drive, and do not ride with a woman driver or a man that is not my Mahram […]. At first, I opened a daycare at home, and at a later stage, I hired a space in the middle of the village. Today I have 20 children aged 2–3, with two other caregivers… My paycheck is lower, but I am happy with my choice.

The space of pious women’s independent mobility is limited. For a woman to move around between neighborhoods in the same village, she needs private or public transportation, the latter being extremely scarce in Arab villages. Lately, some religious leaders changed the rules, allowing pious women to drive with other women, but some of these women, like Nada, still choose to be stricter and avoid driving with women. According to Nada: “It makes no sense for me to give up my driver’s license and avoid driving to be part of the religious group, but still go by a car driven by another woman. It is an absurd”. Limited mobility is one of the main barriers for the integration of people, particularly women and other disadvantaged groups, in the labor market in Israel and elsewhere (Keinan and Bar 2006; Yashiv and Kasir 2011; Blumenberg and Manville 2004; Åslund et al. 2006; Dujardin et al. 2008; Korsu and Wenglenski 2010).

Public transportation in Arab towns in Israel is less effective compared to Jewish towns (Na’aly-Yossef and Cohen 2012). Around a decade ago, the state declared a reform in public transportation to Arab villages, in which the main beneficiaries were educated women between the ages of 30–50 with no private car, merely 8% of Arab women in labor-relevant ages (Barak 2019). Yonay and Kraus (2017) suggest that the relatively high unemployment rate among educated Palestinian women in Israel is the result of a lack of appropriate work opportunities for them. Kasir and Tzhor-Shi (2016) mark three discrimination foci that cause the absence of Arab–Palestinian women from the labor market: First, only 3% of Arab children aged 0–3 study in subsidized daycares compared to 21% in the Jewish sector; second, the number of bus rides per resident in the Jewish population centers is six times higher compared to the equivalent in Arab population centers; and third, the scope of employment areas in the Arab sector is 2.7 sq.mr. per person compared to 11.6 in peripheral Jewish communities. Thus, public transportation alone does not promote the integration of Arab–Palestinian women in the labor market. This is particularly true in the case of Druze religious women whose mobility is dependent on a male Mahram beyond the availability of public transportation. In the last decade, a new industry was developed of women driving other women as well as children within the village sphere. The drivers are mostly non-religious, uneducated women who drive children to their schools as well as other women—mostly traditional ones—within the village. Most pious women avoid riding in a car with a female driver as part of their “understanding” with the religious leaders’ rule of limiting women’s mobility without a Mahram. This avoidance serves as “proof” for their piety based on strong faith and individual choice.

Thus, Druze women choose to be part of the pious group knowing they would have to give up their options of integrating in the mainstream labor market as professional workers and sometimes give up their independent mobility options. Their compliance with the rules set by religious leaders, their decision to give up a lifestyle that would allow diverse employment opportunities, and their decision to work in local jobs, with a work environment that is adjusted to their religious needs, reflect free and subjective choice, which enables them to maintain their two key identities: the religious one and the professional one.

5. Conclusions and Discussion

The current paper suggests that Druze pious educated women challenge the dichotomic structure. These women manage to maintain their two main identities, the religious and the professional, thus gaining higher education and developing a professional career while still belonging to the religious group. The intersecting axes limit women while also allowing them to create some alternatives, albeit with some prices. These alternatives are created based on critical perceptions toward the religious male-dictated rules.

The paper suggests that disagreements between religious women and religious leaders create a strong internal conflict for the women who try to maintain their two identities—the religious and the professional one. This conflict is solved only when there is another Hilwe in the village with disagreements between religious leaders concerning the education of religious women. Thus, pious women can transition to another religious community despite feeling estranged. In his paper about the stranger, Simmel Georg (2012) argues that being a stranger exacts a toll but also carries some advantages. On the one hand, the stranger is located within the boundaries of a specific social framework, and they belong to the social group. On the other hand, their status as strangers is evident to everyone, as they were not part of the group in the first place. And so, the strangers can belong, but they are still strangers. In the same spirit, it may be argued that while women who transition between Hilwes feel estranged, they were the ones who chose to transition, and they can also leave by choice (perhaps when they finish their studies) and go back to their original community. Being strangers gives this women freedom and allows them to break the boundaries of acceptable behavior in their own communities.

Despite their sense of exclusion and marginalization, pious Druze women manage to plan and act individually, giving their intersecting identity a new religious meaning in the Druze environment. They mark the growth of a new generation of Druze women: Pious, educated, and professional. The secret of these women’s success is dependent on two elements. The first is the religious leaders—the Hilwe Sais—who are appointed by their Hamula instead of inheriting their title. These leaders may be more flexible as part of their attempts to attract women to their Hilwe and improve their political–religious status. The second element is women’s motivation to realize their choice—to combine education and career with their belonging to their religious community. While this choice may require them to pay a price by changing their profession, reduce their income level, or give up their mobility, they are willing to pay this price, as they view the combination of their religious and professional identities as a source of power and agency. These choices are dependent on cultural, religious, social, and political contexts, and they allow women some leeway within and against the patriarchal structure (Narayan 2001; Herzog 2009). This agency infiltrates into their cultural–religious environment, creating perceptional changes in the short and long term. As mentioned, the strategies of Druze pious women in the labor sphere as well as in academia challenge the orientalist perceptions that describe women in religious societies as compliant, subordinated to the patriarchy, and accepting of gender dictates (Razack 2007). Their agency recreates the rules, the practices, and their daily routine.

The current study contributes to research that examines religious societies in their constant struggle against modernity. Specifically, an intersectional framing of the women’s experiences enables the analysis of discrimination and inequality to focus on the experiences of those women and to highlight the fact that discrimination often occurs in multiple dimensions. The study clarifies how these intersections develop capacity for agency among minority women who choose to be religious, educated, and financially independent.