The Women's Rights Movement (PFWAC)

Improved Essays
The response of both men and women within nationalist groups, forced members of PFWAC to reconsider the possibility of achieving equality, justice, and rights both as women and as Palestinians. The questions raised by the response of nationalist groups created a binary in which Palestinian women could either be Palestinian or be women. In other words, Palestinian women could advocate for their rights as Palestinians or as women, but never simultaneously, the ability to advocate as Palestinian women was not seen as a possibility. The intersectional identities of Palestinian women are ignored in favor of singular identification.
The method through which PFWAC operates is one “structured by field conditions, the extensive grassroots organizing
…show more content…
The activist work of PFWAC is deeply feminist in nature, in that PFWAC’s work is centered around the needs and voices of marginalised women. PFWAC in their work while centering and producing feminist work and a feminist message, does not directly challenge or disengage from nationalist discourse. The work of PFWAC, in particular the work involving preschools, allows for marginalized women to enter into public space, while also creating a larger base from which leftist Palestinian nationalist movements are able to draw. Women were given new opportunities and spaces in which to define themselves as neither women nor Palestinian, but Palestinian women. The intersectional identity of Palestinian women could not exist within other non-women lead leftist nationalist organizations like DFLP, without the identity of women being subsumed by the Palestinian aspect. PFWAC existed as both Palestinian and feminist in order to address the nationalist desires of Palestine and to advocate for the rights and opportunities of women both in the present and within the future

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