"Arab women will work - if they can get to jobs"

"An Israeli Arab woman with an academic degree has fewer children than a Jewish woman with an academic degree, according to a study I conducted. If the Israeli government is so worried by what is called 'the demographic problem', it should give as many scholarships as possible to Arab women," said Abraham Fund Initiatives co-executive director Mohammad Darawshe, with no small degree of cynicism.
Speaking at the panel on the Israeli labor market at the at the "Globes" Israel Business Conference yesterday, Darawshe criticized recent comments by Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz that Arab women have issues of mentality because the men don’t want them to work. Darawshe retorted that mentality was actualy a marginal issue, and that other barriers were far more acute. They include the lack of transportation networks and lack of jobs offering a decent wage.

"The average salary in Sakhnin is not even NIS 1,500 a month. Enough to buy a few felafels and maybe a side dish," said Darawshe cynically. "These numbers demonstrate that we must better enforce labor laws in the Arab community." He added that 91% of Israeli Arab women with a car participate in the labor force, which he said underscored his claim that a transportation infrastructure was a barrier.

Darawshe said that the education system in the Arab community was in a state of total collapse, partly because of inadequate technology means, such as computers. Private schools fill the vacuum: of the nine high schools in Nazareth, seven are private schools. "The success rate at the private schools in terms of the number of pupils who go to university, is even higher than the Jewish community, which only goes to prove that the Arab community has no problem with intelligence - it just lacks the tools."

Shmuel Ne'eman Institute for Advanced Studies chairman Prof. Zeev Tadmor also discussed the "toolkit", but in the context of haredim (ultra-orthodox) in the labor force. "I spoke with a rabbi in Brooklyn who included such a toolkit in Hassidic schools there, a kind of 'core professions' in fact." Tadmor added that haredim have a "great culture of education", so they are able to participate in academic studies, job training, and in the work force.

OECD Director for Employment, Labor & Social Affairs John Martin said that the Israeli government was not doing enough to deal with poverty, which was especially prevalent among Arabs and haredim. He said that more effective policies were needed to bring these communities into the workforce, by improving infrastructures and massive investment in education.