Nida Abu Awwad. Arab Studies Quarterly. Volume 38, Issue 3, Summer 2016.
The gendered nature of the agricultural sector is significantly influenced by the political and socio-economic and cultural structure of any society. The division of labor between males and females within the family farm is seriously affected as a response to economic pressures along with the impact of other restrictions imposed by predetermined gender roles. In the Palestinian context, economic pressures were created mainly by the structural transformation in Palestinian agriculture following the Zionist settler colonization of Palestine, along with other minor factors related to the Palestinian neoliberal economic policies dictated by the international financial institution and Zionist interests. This article argues that the gendered nature of the Palestinian agriculture sector has been transformed and has promoted women’s exploitation as follows: First, restructure of the agricultural employment by the decline of both women’s and men’s employment of the total Palestinian labor force within serious exploitive and fluctuating conditions; second, changes in tasks and division of labor, women’s property rights for agricultural land resources and services provided by the Palestinian Authority; and finally increasing women’s burden by increasing their time allocation for agricultural tasks. The data presented in the article are based on a comprehensive analysis of secondary information on Palestinian agriculture, and primary data collected in 2010 with the help of a few households case studies (life history) from two locations in the central region of the West Bank.
Introduction
In the early twentieth century, Palestine used to have a predominantly agrarian economy, which was characterized by traditional subsistence production, and Palestinian rural women used to make considerable contributions to agriculture as elsewhere in developing countries. However, since the mid-twentieth century, the Zionist settler-colonial structural domination of the Palestinian people, land and economy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip led to a fundamental change in Palestinian agriculture and its gendered nature. More specifically, farmers and agricultural workers, whether men or women, faced several common obstacles and challenges, yet little is known about the gendered nature of Palestinian agriculture in terms of the nature of the contribution, the division of labor, the roles and needs of each of them.
Analytical research and literature on Palestinian agricultural sector and employment from the view of political economy is limited, and it was mainly constructed within the studies on the Palestinian economy and economic development in general (for instance, Abed, 1988; Farsakh, 2008; Hammami, 1997; Naqib, 1999; Shaban, 1999).
Moreover, women’s economic contributions including agriculture were not of interest to researchers, in particular Western researchers, in contrast to the ways Western literature prioritized a focus on the contribution of women to the economy in other regions, such as Africa. The following quote from an analysis of gender and agriculture in the African continent exemplifies this trend:
Earlier work on colonial gender regimes focused on women in productive and commercial activities in the rural and urban areas and the acute tensions in gender relations that were created. (Zeleza, 2005)
However, in the Palestinian case economy, land and agriculture were not only an economic issue but also the core of the existence of the Zionist entity and at the heart of the Palestinian Zionist colonization confrontation. The Zionist entity vigorously sought to uproot the Palestinians from their land and expel them to the neighboring countries, which is embodied in the Zionist ideology and the myth propagandized by the Zionist movement: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” Therefore, studying the Palestinian agriculture and the gendered nature of agriculture would force Western researchers and scholars to discuss the legitimacy of the Zionist settler colonialism. Furthermore, it may force them to enter in confrontation with the Zionist lobby rooted in Western academic and research institutions, thus threatening their careers.
The main focus in studies on Palestinian women was on women’s movements and women’s political contribution, while little work has focused on issues of women’s economic contribution, and even less attention was given to the issue of women and agriculture in relation to colonialism. Therefore, this article aims to bridge the gap created by the limited studies on the influence of colonialism on the gendered nature of agriculture and agricultural labor in Palestine. It highlights the issue of the participation of Palestinian women in agriculture due to its importance in development, poverty alleviation, the well-being of the households, women’s economic empowerment, and as a way of resistance against colonialism.
The first part of the article analyzes the Zionist settler-colonial policies along with the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) market. policies and their impact on the agricultural sector in general. The second examines the gendered nature of Palestinian agriculture and the contribution of women to agriculture relying on three elements: women’s share of agricultural labor force, access to land and other resources and services, and time allocated to agricultural work. Finally, the article addresses agriculture as a way of resistance. This article highlights the fact that division of labor between males and females within family farms varied by region and farming systems; however, the Palestinian case revealed that it also occurs in response to economic pressures as a consequence of settler colonialism’s structural domination, and not solely restricted by predetermined gender roles as noted when males shifted to the Zionist labor market.
The article employed qualitative and quantitative methods. It includes a comprehensive analysis of the secondary data presented in the report of Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) the “Agricultural Census 2010: Final Results—Palestinian Territory,” and primary data collected in 2010 with the help of a few households case studies (life history) from two locations in the central region of the West Bank.
The Political Economy of Settler Colonialism and Palestinian Agriculture
The gendered nature of the Palestinian agriculture cannot be understood in isolation from the general context of political economy, especially that this study shows that the gendered nature of agriculture, including division of labor, is mainly constructed as a result of settler-colonial structural domination as well as the underpinning patriarchal practices.
The Palestinian economy has been fundamentally shaped by the political and economic developments during the last several decades. The colonial experience since the Arab-Zionist War I of 1948 or the Palestinian Catastrophe (al-Nakba) had a devastating impact on Palestinian society and its economic structure, where it ended with the establishment of what has become known as “the State of Israel.” As a result of the war, the Palestinians lost more than three quarters of their land, the base of their agrarian economy. Furthermore, most of them (over 750,000 Palestinians) were forcibly uprooted from their homeland (Abu-Lughod, 1980). Following the Arab-Zionist War II of 1967, Israel colonized the rest of historic Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Zionist settler-colonial structural domination on the Palestinian economy and agricultural sector in particular relied on varied policies; stripping Palestinians of their land is a major strategy and an ongoing process legitimized by a range of Zionist military orders and procedures. A variety of military orders and policies issued by the Zionist military governor fundamentally shaped and set the structural basis of the Palestinian economy, including land, water, the agricultural and industrial sectors, imports, exports, borders, and trade unions (Abed, 1988; Farsakh, 2008; Hammami, 1997; Roy, 1995, 2001). But the seizure and control over Palestinian land was the ultimate goal for most Zionist policies. The Zionist colonial military orders, such as the absentee private property order (59)(1) and the state property order (58), have enabled the Zionist military administration to seize around 35-40 percent of the West Bank under the pretext of the public good and public security. In fact, statistics show that this land has mostly been used for building Zionist colonial settlements in the West Bank, which by the end of 2013 reached 148 settlements and accommodated approximately 600,000 settlers (PCBS, 2014).
Zionist settler colonialism has almost complete domination over land and is thus the main actor in shaping the Palestinian agriculture. Despite the signing of the Oslo agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the “State of Israel” in 1994, and the establishments of the PA, the Palestinians only have restricted authority over less than 40 percent of fragmented areas of the land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Recently, Zionist colonialism has intensified its policies toward further fragmentation of the remaining Palestinian land through the building of the separation wall, bypass roads, the establishment of permanent military checkpoints, and the expansion of the existing Zionist colonial settlements.
Israel colonialism also succeeded in capturing 80-85 percent of the Palestinian water resources in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and has recently begun to withdraw 90 percent of the water resources (Isaac and Ghanyem, 2001; World Bank, 2009) which deprived the agricultural sector of one of other key elements of production. Furthermore, it imposed restrictions on the import of materials for agriculture such as agricultural equipment, fertilizers, and seeds, and kept the technical maturity models of agriculture low. Zionist colonialism is also continuing control over the external borders, restricting the Palestinian access to external trade as well as integration opportunities in the global economy (Samara, 2000). Exported crops have offered some jobs for women in cutting flowers and harvesting the crops, but these were often seasonal and temporary jobs and in exploiting conditions, as it will be demonstrated later. The agricultural sector was also severely affected as a result of Zionist internal siege and mobility restrictions between Palestinian cities.
Moreover, the Zionist policies of settlement and chemical manufacturing brought devastating environmental effects on the Palestinian agriculture. They have been dumping industrial waste and sewage into the Palestinian agricultural areas, in valleys and fresh water streams, and causing serious air and environmental pollution.
In addition to the Zionist’s denial of Palestinian farmers access to their land and other resources, Palestinian farmers face exceptionally volatile work environment compared to other farmers in other countries, including curfews, comprehensive closures, and mobility restrictions. More significantly, Palestinian farmers are exposed to physical and psychological violence by Zionist soldiers and settlers as confirmed by many of the farmers, which targets both males and females. The PCBS data (2011) indicate that about one third of Palestinian agricultural land is under continuous Zionist impediments, particularly those close to Zionist settlements, beside or behind the wall, near Zionist military checkpoints, or entrapped within all these locations.
As an extension, and with the extent of Zionist colonial policies and the Palestinian restricted authority over the remaining Palestinian land, the adoption of neoliberal policies by the PA also has a significant influence on the Palestinian agricultural sector. Palestinian national development strategies emphasized the alleged importance of the agricultural sector and its economic necessity. The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture (2010) has pointed out that
the agriculture sector is a principal vehicle for state-building and facilitating an end to occupation. Agriculture in the Palestinian context is not merely an economic or income generation activity, it is considered a major contributor to the protection of the land from confiscation and settlements, it provides food security, job opportunities for 13.4% of the total labor force, it contributes by 8.1% of the GDP and 15.2% of the total exports. (XIII)
But on the ground and in practice, the development of the agricultural sector was not among the priorities of the PA. Agricultural sector budget allocation is nearly nil, with a share of less than 1 percent of the PA budget, while the share of the security sector amounts to more than a third of the budget (The Ministry of Finance, 2013). In fact, the PA decisions and policies are subject to the dictation of the regional and international donor community, mainly the World Bank. These international financial institutions in turn ignore the agricultural sector in their programs to support the PA and have spent less than 1% in support of the Palestinian agricultural sector as mentioned in the Agriculture Sector Strategy “A Shared Vision” 2011-13, thus avoiding the main area of conflict between the Palestinians and the colonialist state.
The PA is mainly concerned with supporting the private sector and capital investments and agricultural export crops while neglecting small farmers and collective cooperatives. It has become well established that neoliberal policies, which promote export crop production in the Third World, had contradictory effects on different groups of women, where some groups benefited and others did not, with the dominant tendency to undermine the position of women as a whole. A lot of criticism has been directed at neoliberal cash export-oriented crops policies, specifically, that they are grown at the expense of agriculture for domestic consumption and environmental sustainability (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nation (FAO), 2011). This is what happened in the Palestinian case.
Neoliberal policies in the agricultural sector increase the probability of further empowerment of the privileged at the expense of distributional equity within the community; this, along with the lack of confidence among the farmers in collective action, has led to the creation of new power relationships among farmers. This further complicated an already complex situation as a result of the settler-colonial domination and led to structural transformation in the Palestinian agricultural sector and increased the deterioration of the living conditions of farmers, especially women.
All of these policies and practices led to undermining the material basis for the Palestinian agricultural sector and its potential development and the dispersal of agricultural employment, including women’s work in agriculture. Many rural households and farmers became landless and lost their traditional work in agriculture, which was mainly in the form of family farming. Therefore, work in the agricultural sector turned into a losing economic project.
Throughout the years of prolonged occupation, the Palestinian agricultural sector’s share declined from more than one third of the GDP before the colonization of the West Bank in 1967 to around 20-25 percent in 1996, while it declined to only 3.9 percent in 2014. Statistics also indicate that the agricultural sector’s share in the Palestinian labor force decreased from more than 32 percent in 1967 to less than 10 percent in 2015 (Kurzom, 2001; Naqib, 1999: 117; PCBS, 2015b, 2016). Generally speaking, the Palestinian agricultural sector is most often characterized by small-scale projects that rely on family labor or limited seasonal employment that also lacks any legal protection, such as a minimum wage or health insurance.
Despite the destructive impact of the Zionist policies on the Palestinian agricultural sector and the sharp decline of its share in the GDP and labor force, agriculture remains the backbone of the Palestinian economy, whether it is the main potential sector for the advancement of the Palestinian economy, or a refuge and source of income in light of the limitations of other alternative opportunities. It is also crucial for the promotion of Palestinian steadfastness and resistance against Zionist colonialism and the protection of the land and national identity. However, transformations in the agricultural sector left a significant impact on different aspects of the Palestinian socioeconomic fabric, including gender. Accordingly, the next section addresses the nature of women’s contribution to the agricultural sector in terms of type of employment, access to land, and time allocated to work performance.
Developing Agriculture as a Way of Resistance
The agricultural sector is a key component in any economy and a principal driver of economic development, while land is the backbone of the agricultural sector; therefore, land and agriculture form the basis of the country’s independence and people’s freedom. From an anthropological perspective, Swedenburg (1990) pointed out that
the signifier of the peasant is used to construct a sense of a unified Palestinian nation for the purpose of the struggle against the Zionist colonial policies, and how, at the same time, the peasant’s unifying function works ideologically to cover over significant differences within Palestinian society.
As mentioned above, outwardly the PA was concerned with developing the agricultural sector; however, the PA did not provide the necessary budget or human resources and other requirements to support and promote the agricultural sector. The Ministry of Agriculture documents consider agriculture a symbolic steadfastness against land confiscations and Zionist settlement activity in addition to the fact that agriculture provides protection against both income and food insecurity during times of crisis (Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, 2010: 1). In fact, agriculture is not merely a symbol of Palestinian resilience against land confiscation and Zionist settlements. Instead, agriculture is the backbone of resistance against Zionist settler colonialism, and is the foundation for building a self-reliant national economy and independence from Israeli colonialism.
Prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian resistance factions became aware of the importance of agriculture as a key component of the struggle and not only a symbolic value of agriculture. Therefore, they paid more attention to support and promote the agricultural sector; they established committees and popular organizations to support agricultural farmers and peasants in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Practical evidence indicates that Palestinian agricultural activities grew relatively in some stages, not only because of and during political and economic crises but also during periods of the revolutionary tide and rising resistance such as the period following the first Intifada (1987) and second intifada (2000). It grew not only as an individual survival strategy to cope with the deterioration of many household incomes but also as a way of national resistance. Therefore, during the first intifada, Palestinian women struggled and became increasingly involved in different agricultural activities to make a living as well as fight against colonialism, capitalism, and male domination. To this day, women’s activities include the cultivation of crops and animal husbandry, processing and preparation of food, and agricultural trade marketing. In addition, women in some marginalized areas including Bedouin and poor rural areas, especially areas behind the Zionist separation wall, have to collect wood for fuel and fetch water. In small-scale agriculture, some women market their agricultural crops and milk products by themselves in their local communities. Other farmer women prefer to sell their products in the central markets of vegetables, or on the sidewalks of the streets in the major cities of Jerusalem and Ramallah, as in the case of the interviewed women, especially the poorer women such as widows and divorced women, with some women preferring to market their products in agricultural fairs and bazaars, specifically women participants in agricultural cooperatives or beneficiaries of support from agricultural committees and institutions.
Although agriculture has been a shelter for poor women and those who lost their livelihoods to meet their basic needs and ensure their human dignity, especially in the rural areas, it is also a solid ground for the Palestinians to bolster their steadfastness in the face of Zionist colonial attempts to uproot them from their land. Furthermore, the agricultural sector could be a starting point for developing resistance against settler colonialism, as was the case during the first Intifada, when agricultural cooperatives grew somewhat due to the encouragement of Palestinian grassroots organizations as part of a wider resistance strategy (Hilal, Kafri, and Kuttab, 2008; Kuttab, 1989, 2006; Naqib, 1999; Roy, 1995).
During the first Intifada, Palestinian women’s committees played a significant role in encouraging women’s individual as well as collective economic activities, especially agricultural activities and agricultural cooperatives. Their interest stemmed from varied considerations, mainly to support vulnerable Palestinian groups, especially poor and unemployed people, on the path toward women’s economic independence and social liberation, promoting Palestinian self-reliance and disengagement from the Zionist economic domination, which were also part of the Intifada’s political and social struggle (Kuttab, 1989, 2006).
Agriculture, Gender, and Colonialism
Historically, women’s participation in agriculture has been significant; however, as in other sectors employment in agriculture and women’s contribution are not uniform. It is affected by the wider socioeconomic, political, and cultural context. Other researchers have pointed out that women are “fractured and polarized” around class, race/ethnicity, and place of residence (Brodie, 1994: 51). Stewart (1992) pointed out that “… there is a potential influence of a patriarchal culture or patriarchal institutions on the framing, implementation or outcomes of policies” (21-24). A report by FAO (2011) suggests that the dominance of free market policies and agricultural trade liberalization has led to deterioration of the situation of rural women in the subsistence economy and the agricultural sector in general, in terms of access to resources, income, work intensity, hours, and social protection. In the late twentieth century, it became well known that European colonialism had a negative effect on women, leading to the marginalization of different groups of women and undermining their position as a whole. Other studies highlighted the negative impact of colonialism on native women’s work, including women’s work in agriculture. For instance, Sheldon (NA) addressed the findings of studies about the influence of European colonialism on African women, stating,
Studies of women’s work during the colonial period often show that they lost power and economic autonomy with the arrival of cash crops and women’s exclusion from the global marketplace. Even further, men and international commerce benefited because they were able to rely to some extent on women’s unremunerated labor.
The Palestinian experience also shows that the division of labor in general including women’s participation in agriculture and agro-related activities was severely impacted during the past few decades by various power structures, but one of the leading structures is directly related to the Zionist settler-colonial domination and policies. The Palestinian case provides evidence that Zionist colonialism has had destructive effects on farmers (both women and men); it also shows that the impact of colonialism may differ among various social groups and gender.
The coming sections are mainly concerned with critically examining transformation on women’s agricultural labor, access to land and other resources, work intensity and time allocation in agricultural work as indicators of the transformation of the gendered nature of the agricultural sector.
Women’s Agricultural Labor: Decreasing and Fluctuating Contribution
This section addresses women’s employment as one of the main aspects of addressing the gendered nature of agriculture and how it is affected by different socioeconomic contexts, mainly the political context related to Zionist settler colonialism, also, women’s agricultural labor, including their percentage in agricultural labor, women’s employment status and earnings.
As mentioned above, the Palestinian case shows that farmers’ and workers’ share in the agricultural sector has deteriorated mainly as a result of colonialism and the ensuing economic crises. In addition, neoliberal policies of the PA following 1994, the marginalization of the agricultural sector and lack of attention to the real needs of the farmers and agricultural workers, women in particular, contributed to the deterioration of their situation.
Recently, employment in the agricultural sector has fluctuated according to the stability of the political and economic situation. Comparison of data from different statistics reports for the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) shows that employment in the Palestinian agricultural sector grows with the intensification of the colonizer’s restrictions on the Palestinian workers within the Zionist labor market as well as during economic crisis, while it decreases when the colonizer eases these intensifications. Shaban (1999) said that “agriculture operates as a shock absorber during closures as laborers work on family farms or in agricultural related activities.” For instance, following the eruption of the second intifada in 2000, Israel’s imposed siege on the colonized Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, mobility restrictions, especially to the Zionist labor market, forced many workers to look for new opportunities in the much more vulnerable, unprotected jobs in the agricultural sector and informal economy in order to cope with the decline in their income (Abu Awwad, 2012, Al-Botmeh, 2013).
The decline in the share of the agricultural sector of the Palestinian labor force is evidence of the deterioration of women’s share as well. As mentioned in the first section, Palestinian women used to make an essential contribution to agriculture. Women’s share in the agricultural sector labor force decreased from 57 percent of the female total labor force in 1970 to 20.9 percent in 2014 (Semyonov, 1994, cited in Hammami, 1997; PCBS, 2015a), while men’s share decreased from 32.5 percent in 1970 to less than 9 percent in 2014 (ibid.). In contrast to men, the agricultural sector still constitutes the second economic sector that employs women after the services sector, but often as unpaid family members and in temporary and seasonal jobs. This is mainly due to women’s limited alternative job opportunities in other sectors as a consequence of the interweaving of settler-colonial structural domination as well as neoliberal capital policies of the PA and their underpinning patriarchal ideology. Despite that, women’s contribution represented only one third of the agricultural labor (32.3%) in 2011 (PCBS, 2015b). This may be related to the fact that women’s contribution to the labor market remains one of the lowest contributions in the world (less than 18% of the total Palestinian female labor force compared with around 70% for male contribution of the total male labor force (PCBS, 2015a)). Women also have restricted access to land ownership as well as other means of production because of the patriarchal culture, policies and practices of colonialism, as will be discussed in the next section.
Meanwhile, the Zionist settler-colonial and capital policies along with Zionist patriarchal ideology contribute to promoting labor market segregation along with nationalist as well as gender divisions, both in the Palestinian economy and among the Palestinian workers within the Zionist labor market. As a result of the above-mentioned Zionist policies, males were forced to shift to wage labor in the Zionist economy or to wage labor based on non-agricultural activities in the Palestinian economy. More than one third of Palestinian male workers were integrated in the Zionist labor market, especially in the construction sector, with much better profits and incomes, and less efforts. In contrast, less than 5 percent of the Palestinian women were working in the Zionist labor market where most of them were integrated in the Zionist agricultural sector on a seasonal basis, with very low incomes (Hammami, 1997; PCBS, 1996, 1997).
They mainly bore those intensive tasks, which are considered feminine jobs according to the globally prevailing patriarchal values, including those of Zionist capitalism, which also boost the already existing patriarchal practices in the Palestinian economy.
Women’s employment in the Zionist agriculture was influenced by the socioeconomic context including but not limited to age, social status, education, and poverty. According to Hammami (1997), female wage workers are relatively old women in their forties with low levels of education. Most of them are widows or unmarried and poor women. In the absence of males and their daily migration to the Zionist labor market however, rural women were forced to bear the burden of agricultural cultivation in villages.
Labor status as another indicator related to women’s agricultural labor shows, as in other economic sectors, that agricultural labor status varies and is still divided based on gender. Analysis of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics report “Agricultural Census 2010: Final Results—Palestinian Territory” (2011) shows that women mainly participate as unpaid family members; around 97.2 percent of all women in agricultural employment, which is higher than that among men (93.3%). They are more likely to work on a temporary basis rather than a permanent basis; around 55.1 percent of them work as temporary unpaid family member employees. Most often, women’s work, especially unpaid family work, in agriculture is not given an economic value from within the family. Moreover, they do not receive the recognition they deserve as this work is considered part of their daily and traditional family responsibilities.
In the Palestinian context, research raw material obtained from the interviews of my doctoral dissertation shows that for some families, women’s agricultural work is considered a minor source of income, while in other households it is considered a part of their daily responsibilities.
In Palestine, agricultural wage labor is still very modest for both men and women (it recorded around 6% of the total employment in the agricultural sector). However, female wage labor is even more modest compared to men’s wage labor. Furthermore, women’s wage labor tends to be less stable compared to men, particularly in cash crops agriculture such as flowers and strawberries. Data from the PCBS indicate that women’s permanent wage labor only accounts for about 17 percent of the total permanent wage labor in 2010 (PCBS, 2011). Palestinian statistics take into account the temporary unpaid family member employee in agriculture, yet do not deal with temporary wage labor, which creates a methodological problem, inaccurately indicating a decrease in the percentage of women’s contribution to the agricultural sector. This may lead to underestimating Palestinian women’s real contribution to wage labor in agriculture, especially (FAO-ILOIUF) that evidence from other regions in developing countries such as Africa shows, namely, that women are mostly employed on a casual or temporary basis such as in harvesting work (Hurst, Termine, and Karl, 2005).
Furthermore, women earn minimum wage compared to the level of wages in the agricultural sector, including export crops, which is a double exploitation of women. This situation has deprived women from achieving economic independence and kept them subordinated to male dominance in the family. Palestinian labor force statistics demonstrate and confirm the gender gap in wages for agricultural labor, where the average daily wage rate for males is up to 73.8 Zionist shekels, while the average daily wage for females did not exceed 63.2 NIS. An investigative television report by Shireen Al-Far for Palestinian Wattan News Agency TV3 that took place over several months during 2013 revealed the severe injustice and the exploitation of women wage workers in the cash crops agriculture in the Zionist colonial settlements built on Palestinian land in the area of Jericho and the Jordan Valley.
Agricultural worker women are often employed on a seasonal and temporary basis without any social protection; furthermore, they are subject to exploitation by both Zionist capitalist employer and the Palestinian brokers. Both the employer and the broker have corresponding interests and alliances that increase their profits.
On the one hand, the employer eludes paying the minimum wage applicable to Zionist workers, if there are any; on the other hand, Palestinian labor brokers often get at least 40 percent of the women’s wages, while the women are left with half or less of their actual wage. Women workers are also more likely to be severely exploited compared to men (Al-Far, 2013), which reflects the implicit patriarchal values and practices of both capitalism and settler colonialism. Consequently, Palestinian worker women in the settler-colonial settlement are exploited nationally as Palestinians on class level as workers and socially as women.
This preliminary indication about the Palestinian case reveals evidence contrary to the findings of some other global studies, confirming that the working conditions and wages of women in export cash crops agriculture are much better than those provided by traditional agriculture (Friedemann-Sanchez, 2006). But there is a need for in-depth study of the size and nature of Palestinian women’s participation in exported agriculture, both those taking place in Zionist colonial settlements or the Palestinian export cash crops agriculture, and to examine the effects of women’s work in export crops on their income, and their status within the family and other areas of their lives. Women’s low income in the Palestinian context deprived them from achieving economic independence and kept them subordinated to male dominance in the family, as the findings of my doctoral dissertation show.
The division of labor between males and females within the family farm may not only vary by region and farming system, but it also occurs in response to settler colonialism and the resultant economic pressures rather than being restricted only by predetermined gender roles as noted in the Palestinian context. For instance, when males shifted to the Zionist labor market and due to the absence of family males, women were obligated to perform the whole processes of harvesting the olive crop, including those tasks traditionally assigned to men, such as picking fruit from the top of the tree using a ladder to get there.
Restricted and Unequal Distribution of Land and Other Resources and Services
One of the major elements that affected women’s contribution within the agricultural sector is their access to agricultural land and other resources and services. According to the literature on gender and women economic participation, having independent land rights is a crucial element in increasing their economic contribution in the rural areas and raising their social status (Agrawal, 1994). However, in the Palestinian context, land takes further symbolic meanings related to the Palestinian-Zionist colonial conflict and national identity. Zionist settler-colonial policies and practices have a significant impact on land distribution in colonized Palestine, whether directly or indirectly. Directly, colonizer policies embodied by seizing the majority of Palestinian land, including agricultural land, especially the fertile ones, building the separation wall, bypass road, and other policies led to shrinking of the size of holdings, and even stripping other farmers of their land.
A recent statistic reveals that the Palestinian agriculture sector mainly consists of small individual holdings (82.9% of the total holding), where the size of about half of the holdings is less than 3 dunums, and 80 percent of the holdings are less than 20 dunums (a dunum is 1,000 square meters). Yet the statistics do not reveal how many people are stripped of their land, or how much they lost of their original land as a consequence of the Zionist settler-colonial policies. Some evidence from my thesis fieldwork suggests that most of the Palestinian families, especially Palestinians in rural areas and those areas near settlements and near the apartheid wall, have lost part of their holdings, and some of them may have lost the bulk of their land. In an interview with May from Al-Jib village from Jerusalem district, she stated that her family lost approximately half of their land behind the separation wall, and now they have to cultivate in other people’s land (May, 2009).
In spite of the fact that women in agriculture still constitute one third or more of the agricultural labor force, the PCBS (2011) data show that in 2010 the number of women with individual agricultural holdings was low (7,561 holdings) compared with men individual holders (97,590 holdings), representing about 7.2 percent of the total agricultural individual holdings, whether plant or animal or mixed farms. But it should be taken into consideration that Agricultural Census did not include those micro-cultivated holdings, in particular, when the total surface area was less than 1 dunum for open cultivated areas or less than half a dunum for protected cultivated areas. Those holdings are expected to be dominated by women, which may cause underestimation in the number of female holdings. Here, we do not discuss how much women exercise control over their land. On the other hand, to some extent, the nature of Islamic law of inheritance contributes to the fragmentation of ownership and holdings, especially for women, where they are entitled to inherit only half of men’s share of the family’s inheritance.
In the end, women lose the most. Limited agricultural land available to Palestinians may negatively impact women in two ways. First, the intensification of competition between farmers over the land reduces the chances of women getting their shares within an imbalance of forces and relationships in favor of the stronger side: the man. The second is that many women “willingly” give up their share of the family inheritance in favor of males under the pressure of a patriarchal culture, or because of the small sized holdings of the household.
In an interview in 2010, Sara, a woman from Al-Jib village in the central district of the West Bank said that she feels ashamed to ask for her share of the family’s inheritance. She explains that the ownership of the family has shrunk after the confiscation of the Zionist colonialism of most of the family’s land to build the separation wall, and that the few remaining dunums of the land do not cover the needs of her only brother, especially that he is much poorer than her.
In addition, the complexity of the judicial process and property registration procedures issued by Zionist settler-colonial administration regarding the Palestinian land in area C and the PA, as well as the high cost of land registration, is all beyond the capacity and potential of women. The Agriculture Census did not address the size of the holdings based on the sex of the holder, but women’s holdings often tend to be smaller than those owned and managed by men, which affects their economic revenues and limits their chances of getting resources, support, and services that may be received by the farmers.
Farmers and workers in the agricultural sector also face other types of restrictions limiting their contribution to agriculture. The final results of the Agricultural Census in 2011 showed that in 2010, more than 80 percent of the total holdings do not receive any kind of government services. In addition, according to the same report, around 26 percent of agricultural holdings in the Palestinian territories do not receive any agricultural extension whether from formal or informal institutions or organizations. In fact, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture has been a source of extension to only 9.9% of the holdings that originally received agricultural extension. Thus, we can imagine how little would be the share of the women of the governmental agricultural extension and other services, including loans, fertilizers, and seeds.
Women were mostly excluded from agricultural services; men are favored in education, training, new techniques, technology, and information exchange on agriculture. Palestinian women remain out of any real concern of the PA’s agricultural educational system, since women have limited access to agricultural education in schools and higher education. It was also noted that the share of women is almost nothing when it comes to the introduction of new agricultural techniques, such as green agriculture and supplementary agriculture. Moreover, women’s share of the total agricultural loans is still very modest, except those small loans that target poor rural women. Data from the interviews of my doctoral dissertation show that women working in agricultural activities are often excluded from extension services. Palestinian women’s experience in this area is similar to a large extent to the experience of many other countries as confirmed by the existing literature such as FAO different reports. The Palestinian case shows that women’s limited access to resources and extension services stems mainly from the PA notions of patriarchy, which is coupled with the institutional effects of “Zionist” settler-colonial rule in Palestine.
Through my membership in one of the agricultural committees and from unofficial observations in the field, it became clear that women are less likely to attend public meetings due to gender role responsibilities or because of administrative arrangements and practices that ignore these responsibilities—for instance, meeting times that conflict with women’s responsibilities, while others are reluctant to participate in mixed public meetings and activities because of the culture of the society that restricts participation of women with males in the public sphere; even when women did attend public meetings, their participation in the discussion remained limited compared with men. For instance, one of the interviewed women said that meeting times do not fit with her household responsibilities.
Furthermore, in the Palestinian context, access to resources and services of production and distribution is often associated with land ownership as noted from the documents of several projects presented by different agricultural institutions, for example, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Union of Agricultural Work committees. This is similar to Peters and Peters’s (1998) findings in different African countries (Peters and Peters, 1998).
Increasing Time Allocation for Agricultural Work
Time allocated for agricultural work is another element in the understanding of the gendered nature of agriculture and women’s contribution to the agricultural sector. Different literature highlighted the importance of time allocation as it is a key resource in the rural areas and the significant variation of time allocation along with gender lines, social status, age, wealth, etc. (Ilahi, 2000: 3). Ilahi (2000) also said,
Time and task allocation, by gender, is responsive to economicincentives, idiosyncratic shocks, agricultural commercialization, access to basic services, including childcare. The existence and functioning of markets also affect intrahousehold time allocation in fundamental ways.
In the Palestinian context, as in other regions, time allocated for performing agricultural tasks varies according to household structure and type of agricultural activity, the production cycle, and employment status for workers in the agricultural sector, but it is mainly a response to the structural changes in the agricultural sector caused by the Zionist settler-colonial policies.
Working in agriculture is itself hard work and sometimes requires long hours; however, the household structure has a crucial impact in allocating and consuming time. Household vulnerability, in particular when adult males are absent or not present, forces women to take on the responsibilities of all the agricultural tasks. They become obligated to make more effort and to allocate more time in agricultural activities. This effort could double if it is accompanied by the added value to the product, such as manufacturing.
In addition, economic activity has significant effects on time allocation. Female farmers who work in livestock activities such as raising cows and sheep spend a long time taking care of them and milking the cows; sometimes, they have to manufacture milk products domestically, which requires the allocation of more time and effort over and above the original working hours. The same happens if they decide to do the marketing of the products on their own, to travel to the market, or to sell them in the neighborhood.
One of the interviewed women, “Zeineb” from Al-Jib village of the mid-district of the West Bank, says that her day starts at 4 o’clock in the morning to milk the sheep, boil the milk, and prepare the cheese. Then, she leaves her home at 7 o’clock in the morning to sell the cheese in the market of the nearby city and performs the same task in the evening, including milking the herd, boiling the milk, and preparing the cheese (Zeineb, 2009). Another woman from the same village said that she sometimes spends about 12 hours in agricultural work per day during the fig season, where she has to pick the figs from the field, which is about 3 kilometers from her home, then she has to travel to the nearby vegetable market in Ramallah (instead of Jerusalem where she used to go in the past) and stays there until she sells all the figs.
Transformation in time allocation in the case of Palestinian farmers is primarily shaped by the Zionist settler-colonial policies, whether directly or indirectly, where sometimes the time allotted to perform the same task doubles. Zionist colonial mobility restrictions along with other procedures increased women’s work hours and forced them to allocate more time to achieve their traditional daily tasks. Nozha (2009) reported that after the imposition of the siege on the city of Jerusalem and the prevention of the Palestinians from reaching the city, she was forced to spend more time marketing her products in other places. As for women working in the Zionist settlements, they have to spend long hours traveling to their places of work; furthermore, those who did not manage to obtain a special permit to enter the Zionist settlements’ farms have to traverse long stretches of rugged terrain for many hours to avoid military checkpoints.
However, working in the family farm with the participation of males requires the least time and effort of women. But the forced absence of male farmers, whether those who were forced to shift to work in the Zionist labor market, or nonagricultural work in the Palestinian economy, in addition to those who have been imprisoned or martyred because of their resistance to the occupation, imposes new burdens on females in the family farms. For instance, the olive harvest requires long hours of work, up to 10 hours a day, which used to be divided between women and men. Women used to take the responsibilities of gathering the olives from the nearby branches and picking the fruit off the ground. But when men shifted to work in the Zionist labor market, women began to take the roles that were traditionally classified as masculine roles and to collect the fruit off the top of the trees. This required the allocation of more working days in order to complete the olive harvest by themselves and without participation of males.
Furthermore, Fatima, another woman from the same village, said that the Zionists refuse to issue permits to allow the males to enter the olive groves located behind the separation wall, thus women are forced to spend more time finishing all the tasks; in addition to that, they may spend long hours at the checkpoints before they are allowed access to their fields or coming out of them.
In addition, colonialist exploitive gender ideology intending to destroy the Palestinian agriculture and promoting the exploitation of women is a factor in the structural transformation of the agricultural sector. By issuing permits only for women, they exploit the common notion that women are weak and unable to take on all these tasks, and assume that if women cannot complete the work, Palestinian agricultural fields behind the separation wall will be destroyed.
Overall, macro-agricultural statistics hide variations related to the gendered nature of the agricultural sector and the participation of women, both among the women themselves and between women and men. The preceding discussion emphasizes the significant differences between working women and men in terms of the quantity and quality of participation in the agricultural sector, and the benefits of agricultural work, such as income. There are also significant gender differences with regard to access to agricultural land and other requirements, such as water and agricultural extension. Furthermore, there are changes in the times allocated for agricultural work, even among women themselves, according to the type of agricultural activity, family structure, and other factors.
In conclusion, the Palestinian women’s contribution in the agriculture sector is essential for alleviating poverty and unemployment, and for household well-being; it is also a step toward women’s empowerment and primarily a way of resistance against the Zionist settler-colonial domination of the Palestinians and protection of the remaining land. However, this article demonstrates that the gendered nature of Palestinian agriculture and women’s contribution is not created only by cultural factors, but mostly as a consequence of the structural deterioration of Palestinian agriculture due to the intersection of Zionist domination with the PA’s neoliberal policies. The Zionist settler-colonialism domination and practices over the years, mainly through confiscations of Palestinian land, the building of colonial settlements, building of separation wall, siege imposition, depriving Palestinians of their water and other requirements for agricultural activities. This, along with lesser but still negative effects of the PA’s neoliberal policies, which motivated local capitalists’ growth at the expense of small and marginalized poor farmers and rural areas in general, led to the destruction of the agriculture sector.
The structural deterioration in the agricultural sector along with the patriarchal underpinning of both Zionist colonial practices and Palestinian leaders’ complicity in neoliberalism structurally changed the gendered nature of Palestinian agriculture. It promoted women’s exploitation in agricultural activities and transformed their contribution to agriculture. These transformations include a decline in women’s contribution in the labor market, promotion of new much exploitive gender division of labor in terms of tasks, limited access to property, resources, and services, and increased time allocation.