Facilitated by Nurit Hajaj, Project and Content Director, Orly Biti, Adv., Deputy Director and Chair of Special Projects, and Ayelet Baruch-Katz, a Tel Aviv-based activist.
Young Naamat provides opportunities for women to join, associate, gain skills, and act alongside other young women from varying backgrounds, employment, religions, and traditions across Israel. They are united in their belief that women can impact Israeli society, specifically the status of women. The group operates in affinity to Naamat and the Histadrut (General Organization of Workers in Israel) to promote the status of women, change social-political policies, and strive for gender equity at home, work, and society.
The workshop expanded upon identities and identity politics, and was facilitated according to the method of content-process-politics.
As a group, participants focused on identities, both permanent and changing, as well identity politics. As activists, these same issues preoccupy us on the national, political, and even party-level. We are constantly exploring the role of various identities across spaces, including our identities as women. Is this identity conclusive, or does it interact with other identities? (Am I a woman, or a poor/wealthy woman? Am I a woman or a Mizrachi woman?). These questions give rise to ongoing dialogue among Naamat activists and workshop participants alike, giving rise to new insights. The workshop enabled participants to see their plethora of identities, the differences between people in the public sphere, and the freedom to choose which identity to assume (whether rooted in an ideological, geographical, sexual, religious, or ethnic status). This process comprises two stages:
- Brainstorming identities, in order to include as many identities as possible, going beyond stereotypes.
- Participants write answers to four questions, which the facilitator elaborates upon:
- Which identity determines your schedule? (Waking up, your daily routine, demands placed on you? How you interact with others? Etc.)
- Through which identity do you view the world? (Who do you compare yourself against? How do you see yourself? What defines you in space and in relation to other people?)
- Which identity do you assume when you act publicly, or if were to act publicly?
- Which identity influences your decision at the ballot box?
Time and time again, discussions of the first three questions revealed a pattern: women’s identities on a daily basis are not politically expressed, because they come to be taken for granted. For example, a daughter who spent significant time caring for her elderly parents realized that this issue wasn’t on her political agenda or that of women in a similar position.
While responses to the first three questions were both standard and surprising (e.g. my identity as a fat woman, as a single woman, or as a Tel Aviv single woman), we discovered that the women take no political action in these areas, although there is plenty of potential.
This led to the addition of the fourth question, which was introduced before the 2015 elections. It was interesting to note that most women mentioned identity politics in relation to their friends, while they remained blind to the influence of their own identities upon their political choices. This activity helped participants become cognizant of how their identities influenced their voting, while accepting other’s choices to do the same.