Bedouin Women of the Negev

From the Alternative Information Centre:

Many women in the West perceived the women of the East as a woman of the noble savage, an obedient woman who sits at home. Their perception of Arab women in the East was a colonial one, and over the years the Bedouin woman was transformed into a magical oriental object. Bedouin women in Israel became exotic research subjects for external researchers, both women and men, who tagged the women as obedient, helpless and under the limitations of male tradition and structures of oppression of both society and the state. The accepted perception was that under these structures, the Bedouin women have no chance to move forward, see the light and liberate themselves from the oppression.

The feminism of Bedouin women is necessary not only for them; their struggle for gender is a struggle for an improvement in the condition of the Bedouin society in general. Their personal struggle is also a political struggle.