Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, and Culture

What Troubled Them?: Women in Kibbutz and Moshav in the Mandatory Period

J Henry Near What Troubled Them? Women in Kibbutz and Moshav in the Mandatory Period T his study is based primarily on articles written by women members of kibbutzim and moshevei ovedim in their movements’ periodicals from 1919 onwards. Though not an exhaustive study of the status and feelings of these women, it sheds much light on the concerns and attitudes of the active, literate elite and gives a detailed picture of developments in this, the formative period of the kibbutz movement. The Kibbutz The Period of Silence The periodicals of the kibbutz movements appeared continuously from 1921 onwards. Of almost fifteen hundred articles published between 1921 and 1929, there were only eight on “the question of the woman” [ba’ayat ha-havera], three of them by men; and, indeed very few written by women at all— mainly on such matters such as “children and parents” and “the pregnant woman’s diet.” Only beginning in 1930 was the matter discussed relatively intensely. In 1936, thirteen years after the foundation of Beit Alpha, the first settlement of the Kibbutz Artzi movement, Meir Ya’ari, the unchallenged leader of the movement, said: “At long last our women are beginning to speak. They have begun to express their bitterness, their aspirations and their efforts. . . . 50% of the members of the Kibbutz Artzi are women, and they have been thrust into a corner.”1 The causes of this silence can be seen best from a broader perspective. Utopia, Post-Utopia and Gender Equality Like every intentional society, the kibbutz was a utopian community: It claimed to be the embodiment of a vision shared by a group of people, crystallized well before they reached Palestine, under the influence of the ideology of the pioneering youth movements, fragments of information about the Zionist settlements, and the thoughts and emotions of idealistic youngsters at a formative stage in their lives. This society would be free of discrimination of any sort, including gender discrimination. Feminist attitudes were part of the mindset of male and female leaders of the labor movement. The work of the liberal and socialist feminists, Russian feminist literature, and other works found their way to the youth movements through many channels. In this literature, the concept of “sexual equality” had four distinct aspects: political equality—women’s right to vote and be elected; economic and personal equality—liberation from economic dependence on the husband; equality of occupation—women’s right to choose their professions and advance in them according to their talents ; and sexual liberation—freedom of speech and action in sexual relationships . The concept of a society in which all these aims would be realized was translated into practical terms in the ideal of the halutza (pioneer woman). The ideal was the woman who took part shoulder to shoulder with the man in the hardest tasks, created new branches of work, rode a horse, danced, took life by storm. . . . For them, work was a sacred obligation. However bad they felt, unless they had a fever they would go on working to the limits of their strength.2 In other words, they strove to be like the male pioneers. Such women fitted well into the early kibbutz, which claimed to be based on equality between men and women. And, indeed, in many respects this claim was not far from the truth. Women’s right to participate in general meetings, to speak and to vote, was self-evident from the very beginnings of the kibbutz; from 1920 onwards, women were full members of the kibbutz and did not depend on the men for their living; from the time when Miriam Baratz “conquered the cowshed” by milking the cows without help from a man, women’s right to participate in the “conquest of labor” was recognized as legitimate and was often a major factor in the economic planning of the settlement. With the creation of the communal educational system, the kibbutz near: What Troubled Them? 123 came close to the ideal of the family in a socialist society as conceived by Bebel, Engels, and others: couples were united by love alone, while the traditional functions of the woman—child care, laundry, and cooking—were executed by the communal system. This was exceptional not only in the Yishuv, but in the world. The struggle for women’s suffrage was not successful in Europe or the Yishuv until the mid-twenties, and the woman in town...