The Demobilization of Women's Movements: The Case of Palestine

"It is now eight years since the beginning of the second Palestinian Uprising, or intifada, in September, 2000, and fifteen years since the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) following the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 between the state of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to end almost half a century of conflict over the land of Palestine. In 2002, two years into the second Uprising, I returned to Palestine to do fieldwork against the background of ongoing Israeli Occupation..."

Published as part of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)'s Building Feminist Movements and Organisations (BFEMO) initiative, this 16-page paper traces the evolution of women's movements in Palestine. In doing so, author Islah Jad aims to highlight the arenas and opportunities for women in civil society to continue resisting the Occupation while working towards a more equitable gender order.

Jad begins by arguing that, within the past 15 years or so, "a mass-based, living social movement, which engaged women from grassroots organizations throughout Palestine in working for a combined feminist-nationalist agenda, has given way to a process of "NGO-ization", initiated by members of the leftist political parties. NGO-ization is...the process through which issues of collective concern are transformed into projects in isolation from the general context in which they arise, without consideration of the economic, social and political factors affecting them. I contend that this process is failing to empower women and that it has transformed a cause for social change into a 'project' with a plan, timetable, and a limited budget, which is 'owned' and used by a small professional elite for the purpose of accountability vis-à-vis foreign donors."

In order to understand the magnitude and significance of this change, Jad first details Phase I, which she characterises as the secular, mass-based Palestinian women's movement (late 1970s to early 1990s). She explores how, through their activism, leftist women's organisations introduced changes in the gender images of Palestinian nationalism whereby it became possible for women to be militant and activist without openly challenging the gender order. To illustrate this, she looks at the work of the Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees (PFWAC). Its agenda was to attain equal rights for women with men in the "public sphere", in terms of wages, job opportunities, education, and political participation. By the mid-1980s, PFWAC had established an extensive network of pre-schools and nurseries, mostly in villages and refugee camps (PFWAC leaders had found that such care was a necessary pre-requisite for mobilising women). Empowered by massive networks of relations, they managed to establish links with women in cities, villages, and refugee camps. Reflecting on this process, Jad argues that "women activists were, through their collective actions, carving out a space for different meanings of gender and gender roles; they were filling the cracks they had created on a daily basis; they were shaping an alternative empowering structure separate from family and kinship ties; and they were opening up spaces for renegotiating the relations between men and women in society and in the national movement."

In the next section, Jad examines the forces behind the fragmentation and decline of the mass movement, and the shift from a social to a gender agenda. To point to only one aspect of this complex picture, she explains that "[t]he 'peace process' had triggered a process of state building in which the gender agenda became a pawn between those searching for a new basis for legitimacy after the split of their party (PFWAC), those who wanted to build a new constituency (the PA), and those who wanted to forge a new space in the public arena (NGOs) by claiming the state for citizens' and women's rights." PFWAC's attempt to promote a gender agenda led to the creation of specialised women's centres, which were meant to examine empirically and systematically the different realities of women's oppression. This move unexpectedly resulted in the proliferation of separate, apolitical NGOs.

One such NGO was the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), the trajectory of which Jad follows in the next section of the paper. The expansion of PFWAC in the mid-eighties had led to the creation of a sophisticated internal structure, with many specialised offices - including an office for women's counselling, which later became the WCLAC. For reasons Jad details here, a need for professionalisation emerged from home-grown efforts to raise funds. This shift led to: a steady growth of WCLAC; the provision of services to women in health, education, and legal literacy; and the spread of more information on the legal status of women and their domestic situations. "However, with professionalization...[t]he well-integrated approach to the trio of oppressions (nation, class and gender) aimed at changing women's situation in society, as well as the direction of the national movement...was reduced to a legalistic approach..." The mechanisms adopted included workshops in legal literacy, provision of legal advice, counselling, and social and psychological help. WCLAC also embarked on documenting violations against women's rights, studying the status of women, and disseminating information on legal awareness and gender training for women leaders. It committed itself to cooperating with all centres and institutions working in the fields of legal aid and social, psychological, and health counselling for Palestinian women. Furthermore, enhancing the relationship between the centre and both Arab regional and international in institutions working for human rights in general and on women's rights in particular was construed as an important mission.

To illustrate the effect this shift had, Jad describes one WCLAC project launched in 1998 called "Palestinian Model Parliament: Women and Legislation". In achieving its defined set of goals, "'real' participation was considered a hindrance that takes much of the organisation's time...[A]lthough WCLAC had set up a series of workshops as a consultative mechanism...the organization...ignored some important feedback...[This] less participatory approach in dealing with issues of public concern...entails emphasis on the 'ownership' of the 'project' and an exclusive focus on successful aspects of it, minimizing its pitfalls and lacunae..." These developments are worrisome, Jad argues: "Driven by project logic, NGO professionals lack awareness of the forces active in civil society and the public sphere, and this weakness enables a disproportionate influence by the donor on the organization's agenda."

Jad stresses that "it would be an oversimplification to perceive NGOs as passive recipients, and donors simply as following or executing their government's policies....The involvement in 'peace process' activities by many NGOs, including WCLAC, aside from getting funding, allows them to acquire power and legitimacy." However, she does conclude that "the dual dynamics of state building and NGOization led to the demobilization of all social movements. The limited life cycle of 'projects' induced fragmentation rather than bringing about...'sustainable networking'...whereby ties made with members and organizations are maintained on a regular basis. NGOization also has a cultural dimension, spreading values that favour dependency, lack of self-reliance and new modes of consumption....I believe that women's NGOs and the new discourses they brought to the public sphere in relative isolation from the overall social, economic, and political context might have inadvertently acted to disempower and de-legitimise civil society and secular actors and their movements."