מיצוי זכויות בראייה מגדרית: המקרה של אלימות בן זוג

In response to public criticism and research and survey findings indicating significant social disparities in the take-up of rights, a “rights take-up” approach has been established in recent years as an institutional policy with concrete guidelines for street-level bureaucrats. In conjunction with the adoption of a rights take-up approach as an organizational discourse, representative bureaucracy theory argues that take-up of rights is best practiced when resemblances occur in social categories between street-level bureaucrats and applicants. This approach is based, for example, on studies showing that in the American context women are more likely to receive institutional assistance in obtaining child support from their spouses if they are served by women clerks rather than men. The National Insurance Institute of Israel (NII; Bituach Leumi) is an institutional space that has embraced the rights take-up discourse, and whose employees are mostly women, who often deal with women survivors ofintimate partner violence (IPV). Consequently, it provides an opportunity to develop a gender conceptualization of the take-up of rights. The unique space of NII raises the question of how its women employees perceive the organizational space in which they are employed. Does this space allow them to express their solidarity with and commitment to women survivors of IPV, or do they criticize it for not providing them with adequate remedies for these women?Until recently, this prism of the gender relationship between women NII employees and women survivors of IPV was not systematically examined. This article focuses on the case of women street-level bureaucrats employed by the NII at a time of the rights take-up discourse being adopted and explores their identification with the organizational attitude during encounters with women survivors of IPV. Our study examined their familiarity with the rights take-up discourse, and how they experience their competence to utilize and expand the rights of women victims of IPV. Our findings suggest that the rights take-up discourse triggers an effective, albeit somewhat bureaucratic, process on the one hand, and a process of dissociating street-level bureaucrats from clients who are survivors of IPV on the other. The implications of this dual process are discussed, and more accurate practices for the treatment of IPV victims are considered.