ABSTRACT
Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, held respectively by Jordan and Egypt since 1948, had a profound impact in transforming the role of Palestinian women. Proletarianization became one of the main features of this occupation, as both men and women were forced in large numbers into the paid labor force (Samed 1976). Wages earned by Palestinian women would often be used to supplement the income of male family members. In cases where their menfolk were imprisoned, killed, or deported, women became the sole providers for the subsistence needs of their families. By the mid 1980s, women constituted close to 18 percent of the labor force in the West Bank and some 6 percent of that in the Gaza Strip. In the decade before the intifada (1987), some 4.5 percent of these women worked in Israel (Fishman 1989). This figure declined by more than half in the years after the uprising. These developments had a variety of consequences, on women and on Palestinian society generally. The effects on refugee and lower-class women and their families were particularly acute, due in part to Israeli restrictions on work in Israel in the aftermath of the Gulf War (1990-1991) and to the cutoff of remittances from family members in the Gulf during the same period.
