Bøker av Esther Hertzog

There are diverse and complex problems faced by women in Israel. This book explores women's roles in teachers' labor conflicts, threatened motherhood within the welfare system, bureaucratic encounters faced by Ethiopian immigrant women, the lack of political representation amongst women, feminist activism against the sex industry, and gender power dynamics in gyms. It is a comprehensive feminist examination of women's diverse experiences in Israeli society over four decades and analyzes society during this time. As an ethnography, the book emphasizes a commitment to social justice and equality, and challenges prevailing social and gender research approaches.

Since Israel is primarily a country of immigrants, the state takes on the responsibility for the settlement and integration of each new group. It therefore sees its role as benevolent and indispensable to the welfare of the immigrants. This be true to some extent.

Assuming that women's empowerment would accelerate the pace of social change in rural Nepal, the World Bank urged the Nepali government to undertake a "e;Gender Activities Project"e; within an ongoing long-term water-engineering scheme. The author, an anthropologist specializing in bureaucratic organizations and gender studies, was hired to monitor the project. Analyzing her own experience as a practicing "e;development expert,"e; she demonstrates that the professed goal of "e;women's empowerment"e; is a pretext for promoting economic organizational goals and the interests of local elites. She shows how a project intended to benefit women, through teaching them literary and agricultural skills, fails to provide them with any of the promised resources. Going beyond the conventional analysis that positions aid givers vis-vis powerless victimized recipients, she draws attention to the complexity of the process and the active role played by the Nepalese rural women who pursue their own interests and aspirations within this unequal world. The book makes an important contribution to the growing critique of "e;development"e; projects and of women's development projects in particular.