Paths to Middle-Class Mobility among Second-Generation Moroccan Immigrant Women in Israel

8. Privilege and Its Discontent

107 C h a p t e r 8 Privilege and Its Discontent Colette, a forty-six-year-old woman, also represents women in the high segment of the middle class. She, like Naomi, was born into the middle class and through her own efforts became an academic professional. She has a BA and an MA degree as well as a teaching certificate. She is a high school teacher. However, she is discontent because her additional mobility is blocked. As we sat on the patio of her house, surrounded by a blooming garden, Colette began telling me about herself by describing her parents. Colette’s parents, like Naomi’s, came to Israel because they were motivated by Zionist ideology. They came to the country as young, secular, single people unencumbered by children and family obligations. Most importantly from the perspective of their mobility prospects, each one entered the country with educational and occupational qualifications that they, like other young people from cosmopolitan, middle-class Jewish-Moroccan families, had acquired in the French-oriented Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in their country of origin (see chapter 2). These accomplishments enabled them to enter directly into what was then the middle class in Israeli society. Colette told me: My mother lived in the European sector of Casablanca and my father in Rabat. My mother studied at the Alliance school where she got her high school and vocational education. She studied to be a seamstress, which was considered an elite occupation for women because wealthy people did not buy ready-made clothes and preferred to have them sewn for them. My father also completed his high school and vocational education at an Alliance school. He studied accounting. They met and married in Israel. 108 C H A P T E R 8 Both parents knew how to use their educational and occupational achievements to become incorporated into the more remunerative segments of the Israeli labor market. Naomi’s father became a bank manager, and her mother became a seamstress in the exclusive female sector of the market—sewing for the elite. Colette told me: After my parents married, my father began working in a neighborhood bank and very quickly worked his way up to become the branch manager. He always wanted to expand his knowledge. He used to read encyclopedias and he memorized English and French dictionaries, even though he knew French, because he thought that at the time people in Israel spoke foreign languages more than they spoke Hebrew. My father earned a good living, and we always had everything we needed. We lacked for nothing. My mother worked as a seamstress which, at the time, was also a prestigious occupation in Israel because well-to-do people preferred to have clothes that were sewn according to the European styles that they saw in magazines rather than buy clothes they saw in local shops. Colette’s father knew how to rationalize his resources in order to maintain the middle-class existence he wanted for his family in the Israeli milieu. One way to do this was to limit the number of children he and his wife would have. Colette explained: “My father said that the financial situation in Israel was difficult and that providing for more than two children was difficult , so he only wanted two children. My parents had two daughters and I am the oldest.” Colette’s parents had the educational resources to be actively involved in their daughters’ schooling. Undoubtedly, their commitment to their daughters ’ studies laid the foundation for their subsequent educational success. Each parent contributed her and his unique capabilities and invested both time and energy in their children’s scholastic activities. Her mother used her education to supervise her children’s daily homework and their supplementary studies during summer vacations from elementary school. Her father, “who was good with numbers,” helped with math homework. Colette continued : “We were spoiled. We were not expected to do anything at home but study. Our parents didn’t expect us to help with the housework, just to study. We were always good students. I was always a perfectionist in my studies.” Colette’s father was the family’s sole provider because her mother became a full-time homemaker after the children were born. She recalled: “My father didn’t want my mother to work. He wanted her to stay at home and devote 109 Privilege and Its Discontent...