Summary
This article focuses on Palestinian Arab women in Israel in order to examine how the timing of their departure for retirement is affected by the labor market and broader family characteristics. Our unique case study, which takes place in a labor market where there is marginalization due to gender and ethnicity, allows us to understand the interrelationships between the structure of work opportunities, the cultural scripts and the agency of women and their families. The article will provide quantitative findings from the Israeli workforce survey, which show that Palestinian Arab women in Israel retire from work early, before the age of 50, despite the improvement in their level of education. We will rely on these findings and present a qualitative study in which we conducted twenty semi-structured interviews with women who retired from the labor market early. The article will examine the push and pull factors leading to early retirement. The push factors are linked to the unstable nature of women’s place in the workforce, while the pull factors are linked to the changing role of women in household work.
Keywords:
Participation in the labor market, Palestinian Arab women, gender marginalization, early retirement.
