Retraining in Social Work for Arab Academic Women: Motivation and Integration into the Field

Social Work as a Field of Choice for Retraining among Arab Women

In 2018, approximately 39% of the social work students in Israel were Arabs (85% of them were women, Mahajne, 2019), almost twice the proportion of Arabs in the Israeli population (21.1% of the general population in Israel; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics [ICBS], 2021). This was a marked increase of tens of percent compared to previous years. Additionally, in 2018, there were nine retraining programs in academic institutions in Israel that included 8% to 65% Arab students (Mahajne, 2018). The increase was in response to a policy ensuring Arabs’ access to academia, in accordance with the guidelines of the Higher Education Council from 2013, of a corrective action to reduce discrimination. Additional reasons for the increase are the relative ease of finding work in the profession and its prestige as contributing to society (Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018).

For most people, the decision to change occupation or career involves deliberations and concern stemming from the need to abandon old practices and to experiment in new and unfamiliar fields. Although few people welcome change, researchers indicate different time points in life and various reasons for undertaking renewed professional training or studies to change one's career (Henik, 2017). These include difficulty in finding a job during crises, cutbacks, or dismissals; dissatisfaction and doubts with the original profession chosen or to which one was pushed; limited possibilities for promotion; burnout; and conflict between the individual’s different roles (Kaye, 1996). Feldman (2003) argues that career transitions, even during economic prosperity, necessarily challenge one's perceptions and self-esteem. In addition, university-to-work transitions happen at a time when graduates make important decisions in life, affecting their well-being (Okay-Somerville & Scholarios, 2013).

Graduate employability should be examined from a gender-ethno-national perspective, that is, an intersectionality perspective, which focuses on interactions between inequality-creating social structures (i.e., of power relations; Winker & Degele, 2011). Additionally, the cultural context may shape values associated with significant differences of work value between societies. Therefore, in Israel and elsewhere, ethnic minorities fail to use their education as a means for social mobility by translating their education into a career in their field of training because of personal reasons and discrimination by society and state institutions (e.g., Sharabi, 2009). However, research on career change has not given much consideration to the complexity of the issue among minority group members (Gushue, 2006), especially in the contexts of gender and of career change before developing a career. To address this gap, we examined occupational change among academic women members of the Arab national minority in Israel who have retrained as social workers.

In a study conducted in Israel, Gewirtz-Meydan and Even-Zohar (2018) elicited the motives for students’ choice of social work. These include: personal and social values underpinned by the desire to help others; the need for self-help; gratitude for assistance from social workers in the past; previous experience in this field, as volunteers; and using it as a springboard to another therapeutic profession to circumvent difficulties in gaining admission to other studies, especially psychology.

While at least some of these considerations may be applicable to Arab women who choose to retrain in social work, it is likely that other factors are involved as well. For example, unique factors for the retraining of educated Arabs in education included: intervention of the family to ensure that women study disciplines that enable them to work under social supervision; potential to find work in the profession in general and in particular in the women’s place of residence; awareness of ethno-national discrimination in potential workplaces; and extrinsic rewards related to the terms of employment. Nevertheless, students in teaching and nursing retraining programs express greater satisfaction regarding their choice of studies than students in the respective basic programs for bachelor’s degrees. This difference in satisfaction levels stems from the difference in ages between the two groups, difference in professional history, and their wish to avoid a cognitive dissonance between their expectations and reality (Awad et al., 2014; Tarabas & Dolev-Lehman, 2016). However, women's considerations in retraining in social work may be different.

In general, based on previous studies, integration into this field involves changes for Arab students. Social work education is aimed to instill values, a professional identity, and knowledge in students, which contribute directly and indirectly to the process of their professional socialization. In practice, however, minority groups in general and the Arab population in particular are not taken into account in social work training or practice. Despite the diversity among Arab students and multicultural sensitivity as one of the main values held by the social work profession, the field of social work is rooted in secular, liberal Western culture. Based on Western cultural values, social work in Israel and elsewhere seeks to promote a social worldview and values of freedom, autonomy, and empowerment, which are often incongruent with Arab culture worldviews and minority status (Barise, 2005; Blit-Cohen, 2021; Jammal-Abboud & Blit-Cohen, 2019). These values can provoke conflicts among Arab students that grow-up within collectivist family and social contexts that shape major social systems in their lives (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2017; Meler, 2017; Sharabi, 2009). Due to their civic status, they may find themselves caught in the middle between their clients and the social services organizations, between realizing their clients’ full rights and following government policy (e.g., Mahajne, 2019).

Education and Employment among Arab Women: Gender and Sociocultural Considerations

Arabs constitute a national minority in Israel. They suffer from discrimination and oppression by Jewish Israeli society and are deeply divided from it (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2017; Kraus & Yonay, 2018). Discrimination and inequality have led to disadvantages at the pre-university stage in Arab schools. Despite improvements and special programs made in recent years, past policies indicate years of discrimination, obstacles, restrictions, and exclusion from access to higher education by various selective means. Such means included unequal allocation of budgets at all levels of the education system and gaps in literacy among Arabic-speaking students (Amariya & Krill, 2019). However, in the past decade, there has been a major increase in the percentage of educated Arab women in Israel, constituting about 68.9% percent of Arab students in Israel (ICBS, 2019). This increase is due to a respective increase in matriculation eligibility rates among Arab girls and the establishment of regional colleges (in the 1990s), which have increased accessibility to higher education for the peripheral populations in Israel, especially women (Amariya & Krill, 2019).

Friedman (2018) argues that higher education is a means of socio-economic mobility of young Arab women. Although it does not provide full equality of opportunity, it becomes a resource that enables them to better cope with discrimination and exclusion. This resource emerges when they maneuver within a dialectical atmosphere of structural opportunities that are intertwined with cultural perceptions which also construct each other (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2017; Sa'ar, 2016). However, “Arab women” is not a monolithic social category. Differential situatedness of social agents impacts the ways they affect and are affected by different social, economic, and political projects of belonging. These projects are everyday continuous dynamic processes that shift and contest social and political spatial processes along gender and ethnic-national lines, rather than merely territorial lines, by which Arab women are constructed and reconstructed as an “other” (Yuval-Davis et al., 2017).

Thus, in light of the rise in the rates of education, there have been changes in marriage possibilities, raising the value of education. Specifically, education has become an important determinant of marriage patterns and increases one’s options. However, the patriarchal context of the family still has major significance, and despite noticeable changes in education, the traditional gender roles continue to exist (Blit-Cohen & Jammal-Abboud, 2017; Meler, 2017; Sabbah-Karkaby & Stier, 2017).

In recent decades, social expectations of Arab women have changed, and they are no longer expected to retire upon marriage and live as housewives, but rather support the family income (Kraus & Yonay, 2018). Yet, patriarchal norms and social expectations require women to combine household maintenance and work in the labor market, by directing them to professions that allow to prioritize domestic work and childrearing, and work close to home to allow it (Kraus & Yonay, 2018; Meler, 2019; Sa'ar, 2016). In general, only 39.6% of Arab women are employed (ICBS, 2018). To reconcile these conflicts, most women study for degrees that do not carry many employment opportunities and later indeed encounter difficulties in finding suitable employment or turn to retrain as teachers after graduation (Awad et al., 2014; Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018). Yet, the need to reconcile conflicting identities begins in earlier stages, even before the prioritization of a gendered career. Even the choice of profession still encounters barriers arising from the status of women in society and their belonging to an ethnic-national and racial minority, which cause a double burden (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2017). They grow-up with a lack of knowledge about the labor market and unintentional employment choices that intersect with the barriers arising from the status of the Arab education system (Amariya & Krill, 2019). Additionally, for many girls the need to choose a profession is immediate and necessary and subject to pressure upon graduation from high school, otherwise they are pressured into marriage (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2017). However, later on as students, Arab women find themselves in a liminal situation in which they have to deal with identity dilemmas and finding a balance between their old and new identity that develops during their studies (Friedman, 2018). For most Arab female students, growing up in a collectivist ethos means they have internalized social patterns and regard themselves as part of a specific collective. This identity construction might result in conflicting situations and decisions for them between their parents’ homes and their community and the college campus, where they are exposed to a different atmosphere (Friedman, 2018).

The complexity of integration into the labor market is also linked to the Israeli government policy of lack of development of infrastructure, public transportation, and employment zones in Arab localities that forms barriers to Arab women's employment (Kraus & Yonay, 2018; Meler, 2019; Sa'ar, 2016). The ethno-national divided nature of Israeli society creates the segmented nature of the labor market. Furthermore, many Israeli workplaces in the public and private sectors alike do not hire Arabs due to discrimination, which is intensified in the case of women wearing veils (Khattab & Miaari, 2013). Furthermore, Arab professionals in Jewish organizations in Israel often experience racism and microaggression manifested in Hebrew words and expressions routinely used by Jews in their mundane conversations (Shoshana, 2016).

Until recently, teaching was one of the most common occupations for educated Arab women. However, because of occupational saturation, more than a third of them work in mostly involuntary part-time jobs or temporary positions, which offer little or no career advancement potential. This high proportion is strong evidence that even educated women face scarce job opportunities (Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018). Many Arab women are not employed in quality jobs that are appropriate to their qualifications (Kalleberg, 2011; Meler, 2019). In the abusive workplace, there are no extrinsic rewards of high quality positions: the working conditions are poor, the positions are partial and temporary, and employee rights are violated. Additionally, these employees lack intrinsic rewards (recognition, self-image, and respectability). In accordance with the above, Arab women experience their world as a multiple, complex space, replete with social, financial, and political tension, external and internal alike, which in turn prompts the need to amalgamate studies that reflect the way they cope with these experiences.

The present article focuses on the subjective perspective of Arab women who retrain in social work: (1) their motivation for retraining and considerations for selecting social work as their field of retraining from a gender perspective and their social-family context and its implications for this employment track; (2) their experience of the learning process during their retraining and their integration into the labor market. Focusing on their experiences through an intersectional lens enables giving attention to inequalities within, and not only between, the categories (Anthias, 2013; Yuval-Davis et al., 2017). As such, these questions contribute to a better understanding of the integration of Arab women with academic education into the labor market.

Study Participants

The study included 27 Arab women social workers who received their qualifications in retraining programs: fast track (2 years) undergraduate programs whose graduates receive a bachelor's degree in social work and are intended for candidates who already have a bachelor's degree. Some of the participants had enrolled in retraining programs immediately after obtaining a bachelor's degree in a different field, whereas others had done so after unsuccessfully seeking employment in their original occupational training for a few years. All participants had graduated from an academic retraining program up to five years before the study. Most of the women (n = 22) were aged 25–29, four were aged 30–39, and one was over 40. Eight women were single, 16 were married, two were divorced, and one was a widow. Nineteen were mothers. All participants had a bachelor's degree in other fields: social sciences (11), humanities (8), health (4), education (3), and law (1), and then completed a retraining program.

Procedure

The personal, in-depth interviews were conducted from February to May, 2020. The current study was approved by the ethics committee of our college. Participants were informed in advance that the study includes questions on their personal biography and that sensitive topics would be raised in the interviews, and of their right to skip questions or discontinue participation at any stage. Most of the interviewees were concerned about being identified and were promised full anonymity in the publication of the findings. All participants were designated pseudonyms, and any identifying information was removed or changed in a way that protects participants’ identity, without affecting interpretation of the findings (e.g., cause of death of a relative).

Data Collection and Analysis

The data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The first interviewees were selected due to personal acquaintance (ex-students). Other interviewees were sampled through snowball sampling (i.e., recruited by other interviewees). They studied at the various institutions that enable retraining. The semi-structured interviews, which are common in feminist literature, allowed us to raise and explore ideas, thoughts, and experiences of women in their own words, rather than in those of the researcher (Gringeri et al., 2010). The interviews were conducted in Arabic via Zoom and lasted 50–90 min. Focused on gender and gender-related issues (Gringeri et al., 2010) in each interview, the participant was able to direct the conversation. She was asked questions about her family context; selecting her field of undergraduate studies and academic institution; her employment history since she graduated; her adulthood period before she was married; making decisions about retraining, dealing with an additional period of studies, combining work and family, and integration into the labor market after retraining. We used member checking to verify our understanding of the information conveyed by interviewees: we asked for thick description of the information and used clarifying questions, open questions, requests for additional explanations, and reflection (e.g., Blit-Cohen, 2021).

Following grounded theory, the recorded interviews were analyzed thematically (Charmaz, 2003) in three stages. At the first stage, all the data were read in order to become familiar with their contents and understand their potential to contribute to a comprehensive picture of the studied subject, and to ensure that they were complete. At the second stage, the data were sorted with the help of tests of the significance and connections were identified between the texts. At the third stage, the themes were collected under primary and secondary headers to elicit answers to the research questions from the items of information and from identified connections between the data.

As mentioned above, the intersectionality lens was woven throughout this study. On the epistemological level, intersectionality was influenced by a feminist standpoint theory, which claims it is vital to account for the social positioning of social agents (Yuval-Davis et al., 2017).

Social Work: Acceptable Gendered and Accessible Track

One of the reasons underlying the retraining of Arab academics as social workers stems from poor grades in undergraduate studies. Indeed, four of the interviewees studied social work as a reasonable option because of poor undergraduate studies achievements, which blocked their entry into other graduate degrees. Even as bachelor’s degree graduates, the admission requirements for retraining are often easier than admission requirements for a master’s degree. Although social work was an accessible track for them, it also served as an opportunity for a license to engage in therapy. As Alar (29, married + 3) explained:

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology but did not succeed in continuing [to a master's degree at the same university], so I chose a similar profession that would enable me to be a semi-psychologist.

Similarly, Bayan (29, married + 1, bachelor’s degree in behavioral science) had wanted to be a psychologist:

I really wanted a master’s degree in educational or clinical psychology, but my grades were not good enough, so I compromised on social work.

Their excerpts echo the words of others who wanted to be admitted to a master's program in psychology but could not because of their poor grades. Of note, while these interviewees made a relatively close choice to their original field of training, this was not the case for all interviewees.

By contrast, Maram (25, single) underwent vocational retraining as a social worker immediately after completing a bachelor's degree in humanities. Although she ascribed her choice to study social work to religious values that encourage providing assistance to those in need, it was clear that her poor matriculation achievements prevented her from being admitted to social work undergraduate studies in the first place:

I grew up on the verses of the Koran and the words of the Prophet, which stipulate that believers should lend a hand and help distressed populations […]. It was clear to me that I would choose a profession with a mission such as social work. Given that my matriculation and psychometric grades were low, I was forced to study another discipline for my first degree, which was easier and I received a high average grade, which enabled me to be accepted to the retraining program.

Maram ascribes her choice to the structural barriers she had to deal with, and additionally, it can be understood that the social work profession is in line with the respectability and social-religious legitimacy for women (e.g., Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018).

Hence, for most participants, the bachelor’s degree serves as a basic stage or an almost obligatory transition route that a young Arab woman that is a high-school graduate must pass on her way to integration into the labor market. The interviews indicate that even when they were enrolled in general undergraduate degrees for which admission requirements are lower, as Arab students, they faced significant barriers to their integration into academia compared to Jewish students. Therefore, they spent the first years dealing with integration problems, language accessibility (first time they studied in Hebrew), and different teaching methods. Social work is perceived as promising in terms of employment (e.g., Yaron, 2020) and as a socially acceptable profession from a gender perspective. Indeed, most social work graduates in Israel are employed (86.3%, ICBS, 2020), and therefore it is considered as a fruitful, functional training program.

Social Work as a Gender-Oriented Profession

In general, the social work profession is dominated by women (Gringeri et al., 2010). Despite social and economic changes taking place among Arab women in Israel, traditional gender differences in domestic labor continue to persist (Sabbah-Karkaby & Stier, 2017). The interviewees referred to the gender adjustment they made by choosing social work studies. Four participants mentioned convenient working hours and geographical proximity, taking into account that in the future after starting a family this would be in line with their gender roles.

As young mothers with small children, they are unable to go far from their homes because of family obligations. As such, the choice of retraining allows to maintain the gender division of labor. According to one of them,

I am a mother of three daughters. I could not leave them for many hours. I searched for a place to study that would be close enough to be accessible if and when they needed me. That was how I came to study social work, because the program was close to my home. (Dunya, 36, married + 3)

According to feminist researchers (Davoine et al., 2008), the question of how women carry the double burden of family and work and how they balance them is one of the main considerations in choosing a profession. Social work offers quality jobs for educated women almost without crossing any boundary of horizontal gender segregation, or breaking the circle of occupations of care and service, considered as one of the few legitimate ones for women.

Social Work: Obtaining a Quality Job

Feminist conceptualizations (Davoine et al., 2008) of job quality challenge the accepted separation regarding employment quality as a person-job/-organization fit and emphasize the need to add family and gender perspective to this tradition of separating the work and family issues. Three interviewees chose the retraining program based on considerations of obtaining a quality job. Two of the women spoke about wages (extrinsic rewards). However, Riham (27, single, bachelor’s degree in health sciences, worked at a play center) indicated that she wanted a social reward:

I was attracted by the respected status of social work in the community. People recognize their specialization and consult with them. I enjoy that respect.

While Riham's present occupational space represents temporary, part-time, and hourly positions, and as such does not meet the criteria of extrinsic rewards, she expresses her aspirations for intrinsic rewards that are part of a quality job. Many interviewees, of various age groups and marital statuses, graduates of heterogeneous fields of study who had tried unsuccessfully to find employment in their field of training or a related field, noted that the potential to find work in social work was the main or secondary reason for their choice of this profession:

This time I decided to pursue something certain and to study a profession that promises a job … What a disappointment it is to study for three years for nothing. In social work, I was promised a position in my own village. (Alla, 29, Married + 1)

And additionally, Rawan:

How wonderful it is to complete your studies and immediately start to work … I understood that there is a variety of work opportunities. You just have to choose what suits you. (Rawan, 28, single)

The interviews indicate feelings of frustration and a sense of personal failure that accompany experiences of unsuccessful attempts at translating interviewees’ former education into employment and expectation that now, in contrast to the past, they would succeed and work in the local geographical area. Indeed, recent data refer to about 1,000 job vacancies in Israel. However, these data also present the difficulty of staffing these jobs because the welfare services in Israel suffer from relatively low wages and a reduction in standards that create a burden among workers (Yaron, 2020). Paradoxically, this reality leads to feminization of the profession, undermining its vocational appeal. It can be assumed that due to the previous occupational distress experienced by the interviewees, the interviewees ignore these aspects and consider it a worthy job.

Social Work: Obtaining a Quality Job While Maintaining Gender Boundaries

Feelings of stress and frustration also arise due to the conflicting socio-cultural pressures to integrate into the labor market, while directing them to female-dominated occupations and expecting them to preserve gender, ethno-national, and spatial boundaries. The patriarchy as a barrier and the great weight of the family intervention in decisions that a woman makes was pointed to by many interviewees as a central motivation for selecting social work as a field of retraining. Interviewees noted that they received the recommendation of their family members (parents, sisters, and spouses) to choose retraining to social work. Raya (29, married + 2) described:

My husband, my parents, and my brother and sisters pleaded with me to study social work. They claimed that I had wasted three years and a lot of money because of my mistaken decision to study the profession in which I trained.

And Fatimah, 42, divorced + 2:

Mother, incited by father, agreed to babysitting for my two children during my studies under condition that I study social work.

Despite changes, researchers (Meler, 2017; Sabbah-Karkaby & Stier, 2017) claim that the extended family continues to be the central source of support and supervision in Arab society. Family relationships are typified by interdependence and low differentiation and are dominated by a sense of collective family identity. The collective ethos that influences the shaping of the Arab family is also expressed in the development of the self. The interviews show that there is a significant intervention of the family in choosing the field of study at different stages of the study period. However, the interviewees also indicated family support during their studies in various ways (financial support, childcare, assistance in preparing food, etc.). Thus, the very need to take into account the social networks in decision making constitutes part of maintaining gender boundaries.

Social Work: Obtaining a Quality Job While Integrating into an Ethnic Niche

All women face a gendered division of labor, but women of color or women from minority groups face employment barriers as well (Bonacich et al., 2008). They are often compelled to pursue a narrow set of jobs. In addition to the cultural and gender barriers mentioned above, the racialization of labor continues unabated, often with covert microaggression through everyday language (Bonacich et al., 2008; Shoshana, 2016). Therefore, analyzing the diversity of ethnic minority labor market experiences from a gender perspective raise major concern in Arab society in Israel as in many national-ethnic mixed societies (Kraus & Yonay, 2018; Meler, 2019). Although the opportunity structures in the center of Israel are potentially greater than in the periph­ery, the interviews reveal that women who stay in the communities of origin respond to social and family pressure, which exempts them from dealing with the question of working in the mixed ethno-national space:

I consulted my partner. He advised me to stay away from nursing because of the shift work and to take up social work. (May, 29, married + 2)

In recent years, alongside retraining in social work, there are others who choose retraining in nursing. However, the nursing profession involves night shifts and often integration into an ethno-nationally mixed employment space, namely crossing geographical (work outside the community) and gender (night work) boundaries.

The requirements for gender adjustment are linked to gender and structural restrictions regarding public transport and mobility and constitute the ethnic niche. Many interviewees chose to undergo retraining at the college where they studied for a bachelor's degree, due to proximity to the locality where they reside. Rawan (28, single) lives in a peripheral rural community in the north, has a bachelor’s degree in education, and has worked after graduation as a clothing shop assistant in the Jewish sector. After a while, she considered enrolling at the Jerusalem Academy of Arts to increase her chances in the labor market, teaching art. However, due to limited transportation accessibility and gender-based restrictions, she could not study in places far from home. As a result, she compromised on studying in a college that could be accessed by public transport from her village:

I wanted to undertake retraining in another profession, but I do not have a car, and travelling to the university with almost no public transport was virtually impossible. The alternative was to study social work in a place which was easy to access and close to home.

Rawan presents the complexity experienced by Arab women, whose high level of dependence on public transportation is known to be a powerful barrier. Although transportation infrastructure in Arab localities has improved greatly in recent years, reaching employment centers is still a complicated and time-consuming task (Bleikh, 2018; Kraus & Yonay, 2018). Dependence on public transportation is rooted in the gender context: owning a driver’s license and a car for young women, possibility of free mobility, or the option for single female students to live outside the parents’ home and run an independent household are less popular because it is considered socially unacceptable from a gender perspective. The integration into social work enables women to gain a quality job while expanding their spatial opportunities without changing the local employment zone by integration into the ethnic niche.

Selecting Social Work out of Interest in the Profession

Among the interviewees, four women succeeded in finding work after obtaining their first bachelor's degree in an occupation that interfaces with social work (boarding school instructor, coordinator of rehabilitation clubs, educational instructor in a hostel, instructor in a program for at-risk children and youth). This previous employment background gave them prior experience in the field, to which they attributed their choice of retraining in social work. Beyond the need for legitimization of their work and the desire to be promoted in it, they reported that the direct contact with different levels of the profession brought them to choose social work, as was expressed by the boarding school instructor, Mannar (34, married + 2, bachelor’s degree in social science):

In my work there were aspects of professional intervention—personal connection, trust, empathy, authority—and that whet my appetite for retraining.

Another consideration that emerged from the interviews was a need for self-help. In retrospective view, two of the interviewees felt that they had chosen social work out of a need to treat their own psycho-social injuries. Shireen (26, single), who had lost her sister in a road accident, enrolled in a retraining program a year after completing a bachelor's degree in health care:

I could not speak after the event. I hoped that my studies in social work would heal me. I also believed that treating the distress of others would give me a perspective and balance.

Similarly, Sheefa, a widow, has a degree in education, but as a mother of four of dense ages had not worked before, and she linked the choice of profession to the grief she experienced:

I had a feeling that only social work would … set me back on my feet. It seems that therapeutic interventions in my capacity as the one who provides the service and does not receive it was the tool that enabled me to process my personal grief.

According to Gewirtz-Meydan and Even-Zohar (2018) one of the motives for students’ choice of social work was the need for self-help, meaning that the people who will provide assistance in the future look after their own emotional traumas and unresolvable conflicts.

The Retraining Process: Between Personal Growth and Repeated Effort

As retraining students, the participants experienced a stronger opening position due to their previous academic studies. Their advantage over new Arab students in regular degree studies was expressed by them in four dimensions:

“‘Mastery of Hebrew.” Almost all interviewees had already mastered Hebrew at a basic level due to their previous studies in Hebrew-speaking higher education institutions and some of them had worked in Jewish society:

Apart from three years of studies in Hebrew, I worked for several years with Jews [in the general labor market underemployment, not in her field of study] and improved my Hebrew skills. The [retraining] studies flowed without any hindrance due to language [mastery]. (Rawan, 28, single)

“Experience in handling academic tasks.” As retraining students, they began to study after having acquired experience with several academic requirements.

Overall, the interviews revealed their experience of seniority and confidence in the academic and administrative practices. Furthermore, they even stated that they did not feel any pressure at the beginning and felt like they entered a familiar academic environment that they knew well. Additionally, they described their: “Social experience.”

Nasera’s words indicate that she knew how to deal with the multicultural encounters. The last dimension is related to “Circumventing the lack of mastery of English.” Most of the women did not have good mastery of English, which constituted their fourth language following Spoken Arabic, Literary Arabic, and Hebrew, but they knew how to deal with it. Interviewees emphasized a positive experience that arises precisely from being experienced students in academia and the sense of security they acquired in their previous exposure to the Israeli space in academia or in their experiences in the labor market. To a large extent, paradoxically, occupational constraints shape an academic biography that moderates the complex experience raised in previous studies by Arab female students in the very encounter with academic life (Friedman, 2018). In the specific case of Arab social work students, their previous academic exposure moderates the complexity experienced due to the studies, the gap between the Western values on which the curriculum is based vs. reality, their young age, and lack of life experience that affect their self-awareness and identity (Blit-Cohen & Jammal-Abboud, 2017).

Despite the positive starting point, some interviewees indicated the cumbersome inconvenience of retraining, as expressed in tedium due to memorizing contents and work burden. Those who had previously studied social sciences, were bored by the theoretical courses because of a sense of repetition of their previous academic studies. For example, Reham described it as an experience of a “replay”:

[The requirement to] repeat these courses under the excuse of acquiring missing knowledge […] made it difficult for me to concentrate. I am bored. It is like watching a film for a second time and I am expected to be amazed by it as though it is the premiere. (Reham, 28, married + 3)

Graduates of humanities or social sciences degrees in particular expressed their boredom and their wish to learn more intervention models and gain practical experience, or in their words “with less emphasis on the macro that did not lead to anything practical or useful.” While the burden of retraining is likely relevant to most students undergoing retraining, the burden is heavier for women in general, and even more so for Arab women. These women live in a society that still maintains patriarchal patterns, and the path they have taken in recent decades in integrating into the higher education system and the labor market occur alongside the pressure to marry that the women's families exert on them (Meler, 2017; Sabbah-Karkaby & Stier, 2017).

Almost all participants described how they have to manage under the double burden of balancing family chores, gender relations, household, and other aspects of the family life, and employment requirements. Haneen (33, married + 2) described her “second shifts,” echoing the conceptualization of Hochschild (2003):

Everything was on me. I laundered, cooked, cleaned, shopped, paid for everything, and maintained the home, so those general courses were just an extra load.

Others experienced troubles in raising children while learning, such as Sheefa (widow + 4):

The children were not interested in my studies. They had demands concerning their studies, games, basic needs etc. Usually these were at a cost to the [theoretical] courses and not the practicum.

Although women may enter the professional pipeline at different places in their developmental life cycles, caregiving tends to cause leakage or interruptions. Other women, especially those who were single or divorced, needed to finance their studies by themselves and this meant that their work was a burden hindering their studies:

I had a clash between my studies and work. I needed money and my employer was not interested. I felt like a tightrope walker. (Manal, 27, single)

Thus, many of the single women funded the retraining studies, and felt the strong economic pressure to work in parallel, with no option to opt out. This heavy double burden also led many of them to use maneuvering attempts in dealing with the academic system in order to survive the stressful circumstances. The interviews reveal many simultaneous expectations from young Arab women from the moment they finish high school. These expectations include integration into the higher education system followed by integration into the labor market during marriage and starting a family. However, the choice of women to make a transition to social work shows that women are willing to find their way and push gender boundaries. Thus, even within the gender supervision that preserves the expectation of them to combine work and family and the expectation of work near the area of residence, they manage to be accepted to quality jobs and obtain recognition of their status as having academic education and a job in their field of training.

The interviews show that the women negotiate to meet all the requirements of the retraining. The extra-academia burnout and commitments had negative implications for the students’ efforts and achievements in their theoretical studies on different levels. They told us that they overused student rights (in general, or by using cultural-religious discourse or exploiting gender aspects). Interestingly, many of them stated that they were satisfied with grades which were not high, although they were aware that this would reduce their chances of continuing to graduate studies: “I did not have the strength to invest [much effort] in those courses.” (Roaya, 28, married + 1)

The excerpts of many of the interviewees suggest that even at this stage, when they are undergoing retraining, they are directed by practical employment considerations (e.g., Sharabi, 2009). They are satisfied with a passing grade and have a practical desire to establish a professional identity and obtain a quality job and consequently establish their personal-family status. They do not study out of genuine interest in the field or a strong sense of commitment to the vocation. Rather, the women's choices are repeatedly driven by the collectivist-familial context. However, they also noted that in contrast to the general theoretical courses, they invested great efforts in their practicum and in the core courses relating to the practicum and found them relevant to the profession, allowing them to acquire a professional toolbox.

Integration of Arab Women Retrained in Social Work into the Employment Field

All the women, apart from one who was on maternity leave, found work immediately after receiving the certificate from the Ministry of Welfare upon their registration in the Register of Social Workers in the local governments and in the private sector. The interviewees reported about their optimal integration at work and expressed it operatively in different ways. Huda said:

Every morning I wake up to work with a smile. I coordinate the work of four clubs for at-risk children, work that necessitates my working on many tasks. Despite my tiredness, I enjoy my work. I am excited and fully motivated. I feel self-fulfillment. (Huda, 30, divorcee + 2, worked as a secretary)

The women described their commitment to work and the investment of time.

While the choice of retraining is anchored in gender expectations and gender-ethnic boundaries, the interviews show that some women, after settling in the field and having “social approval” can cross boundaries (gender and ethno-national).

Working in a prison or a hospital like Abrar or May extends the accepted boundaries within which women are expected to be at the accepted hours at home and not to violate gender norms (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2017; Davoine et al., 2008; Meler, 2019). Although the interviewees chose a “legitimate profession,” they managed to challenge the gendered ethnic order within it. In doing so, they expose themselves to intercultural and gender tensions inherent to the therapeutic encounter and the gap between the values they internalized due to their position as Arab women and their professional identity as care providers (Jammal-Abboud & Blit-Cohen, 2019). Challenging the gendered ethnic order was also described by a Aya, as negotiations with religious leaders:

As a regional social worker mainly looking after the issue of domestic violence in localities with a Muslim majority, I have created partnerships with religious leaders in each locality. I even motivated them to establish two shelters for violence victims as a service for religious women, who are scared to go to shelters under Christian or secular management. (Aya, 29, single)

Raya expressed her determination to broaden her professional knowledge:

I believed that in the field of volunteer recruitment there should be mentoring to do the work properly. I insisted that I should receive a mentor for my professional development in this field. I want to succeed in my job. (Raya, 29, married + 2)

The excerpts indicate integration into the labor market out of commitment and dedication. The women describe the ways in which they give priority to the occupational space and identify themselves as career women whose identity as such sometimes prevails over the maternal-domestic identity. This comes as a novelty, since in the past, academic women differed from non-academic ones in the type of work they could do; however, none of them were considered career women, and they were all subjected to cultural norms and restrictions (Abu-Baker, 2002). When they started their mature life, the women in the present study made their first educational and employment choices based on a set of cultural and structural barriers. However, their path to retraining in social work enabled them to obtain quality job, earn an income, and a sense of self-fulfillment as career women (Abu-Baker, 2002). Those early encouraging signs are supported by a previous study, suggesting that among Arab social workers, job satisfaction correlated positively and significantly with challenge at work, job autonomy, job mastery, and power at work (Haj-Yahia et al., 2000).