Attitudes to women working in the West Bank are changing: the problem is they can’t get their goods to markets

30 April 2008

Tamam walks with a slight limp but her disability doesn’t prevent her from working tirelessly to support families with disabled family members and women who want to work.

"In some ways I'm very lucky," says Tamam, sipping fresh mint tea in the women’s centre of Jaba'a, a village very close to her own.

"To compensate for the way I was born my family allow me freedoms that most women don’t have. I use these freedoms to help others."

Tamam was inspired by a network of donor- funded women's groups springing up in villages around her own. As a social worker she helped CARE persuade women in Jaba'a to open a centre of their own where women could work together to process and market food products.

"I had a lot of trouble at first. Even in Jaba'a which is less conservative than my own village I couldn’t convince women to come forward." But Tamam wouldn’t back down.

"I went myself and begged the women's husbands, one by one. Eventually six women joined me and we opened a women’s centre."

Tamam talks with pride about the achievements of the 450 women who subsequently joined and were supported by CARE International.

"It was so exciting. For the first time women became confident. They could respect themselves. They were like queens with a place of their own where they could meet and do what they liked. They began making and selling simple things, labneh (strained yogurt), pickles, jam and embroidery."

In 2003 Tamam and 31 other women in her village opened their own business.

"It took a lot of discussion but eventually we raised about £1,300 capital. We employed one woman and two volunteers and we began selling the goods that women produced and other items."

According to Tamam, this was the first formal paid work women in Jaba'a had ever done. "I think we gained a lot of respect," She says with pride. However, by the autumn of 2004 the situation began to change.

"By the end of 2004 there were checkpoints everywhere and it would take us a day to reach Jenin to purchase raw materials and sell goods whereas before it took barely an hour. Sometimes, we never made it and we were turned back by Israeli soldiers."

Tamam and the other women tried hard to adapt to new movement restrictions but to no avail.

"We just couldn't purchase raw materials or get our goods to markets and customers couldn’t get to us – not just people in nearby villages but also Israeli customers who used to come on weekends. People stopped spending. Sales got worse and eventually we had to shut down."

Although the cooperative never made significant profits Tamam believes it helped women recognise for the first time that they could do something for themselves and it raised their status in the community.

Today Tamam continues to work with women's centres started with CARE's assistance and funding from other donors - but she's frustrated.

"We're not moving forward. We have much potential but we need to be able to reach markets in Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarem, Jericho and Ramallah."