Till Divorce do Us Part

Do educated Arab women marry later those who did not pursue higher education? Why do a significant portion of Israeli Arab women remain loyal to traditional family structures even when they experienced violence within that family? and how does academic success affect their employment opportunities? These are but a sample of the questions that interest Dr. Maha Sabbah-Karkabi, a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and founding head of BGU’s Multidisciplinary Center for Family Studies.

Dr. Sabbah-Karkabi, a popular lecturer and outstanding researcher, studies changes related to marriage, divorce, and higher education that have taken place in Israel’s Arab society. In one of her most influential papers, she asked whether there was a link between changes in the lives of Arab women and the increase in divorce rates over the last decade. She formulated her conclusions based on dozens of interviews with divorced women in different social positions. Her findings were confirmed by 1995-2017 data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, which indicates that the number of divorces among Muslims in Israel has more than doubled in this period, from 922 to 2,140.

It is notable that the study found the highest rate of divorce among couples without academic education: "In most cases, a woman who is more highly educated than her partner does not undermine the stability of the marriage, but the higher her income is compared to her partner’s, the less stable the family unit could become," explains Dr. Sabbah-Karkabi.

According to Dr. Sabbah-Karkabi, asymmetric economic power in favor of women challenges the normative distribution of roles in the family, and accordingly, also the status of Arab men as the primary breadwinners - and thus also marital stability.

The social and cultural context is important since the figure of the primary breadwinner is related to the meaning of masculinity in Arab society. Yet, the chance of a marriage ending in divorce decreases with increasing age and the length of the marriage.

An Arab woman who decides to get a divorce faces a long and tortuous road. “Apparently, many women fear the reaction of those around them to their decision to divorce, as well as the social stigma and economic challenges. Very few women receive support from their families, and thus, they sometimes carry on living in a violent and unhealthy relationship for many years before they muster the courage to leave their partners,” Dr. Sabbah-Karkabi explained. “Unfortunately, they experience different forms of violence, including economic violence that persists through the divorce."

 "Usually, economic violence develops during the marriage, and in many cases, it continues long after that marriage is over. This is an important characteristic of this kind of violence in the context of divorce, and it is often ignored by both academic discussion and social discourse."

To sum up this rather disheartening topic, Dr. Sabbah-Karkabi said: "The social discourse surrounding divorce tends to place the blame on the divorced women, as those whose actions damaged the integrity of the family they were charged with maintaining. The consequences of breaking conventions and the expectation that women remain in a failed relationship in order to maintain the integrity of the family – all these find expression in the ambivalence they feel about their decision to divorce and the fear of the fallout the next day."

"It is evident from these women’s life stories that once their divorce comes through, they experience their new status as both liberating and confining. In other words, this contradictory experience is an outcome of their release from a failed relationship, alongside their confinement to the status of a divorcee".

Maha Sabbah-Karkabi was born and raised in the city of Shfaram in the Galilee. She completed a bachelor's degree in education and sociology at the University of Haifa, a master's degree in sociology, also at the University of Haifa, and a doctorate in sociology at Tel Aviv University. This was followed by a postdoc at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London in England, and another postdoc in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University.

During her final postdoc, she was affiliated with the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Social and Cultural Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "My acquaintance with BGU began with my postdoc at the Humphrey Institute where I spent two fascinating years marked by encounters that enriched my academic knowledge. In addition, I found BGU to be an institution with a unique environment and diverse human fabric. As I became more familiar with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology through the departmental seminar, I found its faculty members compassionate, supportive and enriching, and this made me eager to join them as a colleague."

Dr. Sabbah-Karakabi’s research continues to center on Arab women. "The existing research literature about Arab women’s low rates of participation in the labor market focuses on the barriers these women face at the entry stage. More recently, academic attention has also begun turning to the timing of their exit from the labor market. Arab women enter the workforce early in their lives and leave it long before they reach the retirement age customary in Israel. This has significant social and economic consequences, and I am now investigating this phenomenon in collaboration with a colleague from Tel Aviv University," she concluded.

Adapted from an original article in issue 136 of Aleph-Bet-Gimmel, the University’s Hebrew language magazine. For the original article.