Abstract
This study analyzes the experience of Palestinian mothers in Israel participating in a non-mandatory welfare-to-work program. The goal is to explore the perceptions of these women and their trainers about the ways the program helps enhance the mothers’ social capital. The study is based on in-depth interviews of 30 mothers and three trainers who participated in the program. The findings expose a range of mothers’ voices. The three main ones are: encouraging empowerment more than Work First; encouraging ‘maternal’ jobs; and encouraging partnership and group cohesion. The combined voices of participants and trainers deepen the significance of these findings, as the latter play a meaningful role in enhancing the social capital and networking capabilities of the former, who suffer from multiple sources of exclusion, including a vulnerable ethno-national status, poverty, low income and gender.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 42-60 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Current Sociology |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 7 Jun 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2020.
Funding
We are grateful to the women we interviewed for sharing their thoughts and emotions and contributing extraordinary insights. We thank our research assistants, Julia Benhaim, Najham Nasrallah and Miri Rom-Shvartzvald, not only for their devoted help, but particularly for their sensitivity to the respondents. We are also thankful to our editor, Helene Hogri, for her considerable contribution. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their valuable remarks and suggestions. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Keywords
- Israeli-Palestinian mothers
- low-income individuals
- motherhood
- social capital
- welfare-to-work