Stimulate move for the emancipation of women in Palestine

Women Now Demanding and Receiving Equal Rights in the Home and Elsewhere

Transcribed from the clipping

HAIFA, Palestine. — The movement for the emancipation of the women of Palestine from their social yoke has just received a new impetus by an exhibition of women's handicraft held here, with results far greater than any hoped for by its most ardent supporters. The idea of woman in industry is a new one in this land. Before the great war woman was considered a burden.

Her place was the jail-like home from the confinement of which she would dare leave only by special permission from her lord and master, the husband. This was especially true among the more ignorant of the Mohammedans who believed that woman had neither brains nor soul and must be treated as an animal.

The fact that she was bought and sold instead of being married for love added great strength to that belief. Today all this is changed. Women are not only demanding but are also receiving equal rights in the home. To the utter consternation of men, they have thrown to the winds custom and tradition and have embarked upon fields tabooed a few years ago.

They have definitely entered industry and are as a result relieved in part of the economic dependence which kept them subjugated for centuries. The exhibition which was the first of its kind in Palestine was opened by the High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel.

In the course of his speech he praised the women of Palestine for the part they are playing in the up-building of the country. The exhibits, which were all handmade, consisted chiefly of pottery, lace and embroidery. Basket making was perhaps the most interesting of all articles on display.

It is believed that with proper advertising, markets could be found and a great demand created for some of the things which the country women in Palestine are capable of making.

Context added by this archive

Datelined HAIFA, Palestine. The same dispatch ran in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle ten days later under a different headline and with three photographs. The paper's own spellings, including counttry, are kept.

Cite this item

"Stimulate move for the emancipation of women in Palestine," La Crosse Tribune, 26 January 1922. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1922-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1922-004