The connective strategies of Bedouin women entrepreneurs in the Negev

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The connective strategies of Bedouin women entrepreneurs in the Negev Aleksandra Biernacka∗, Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, Gideon M. Kressel Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, The Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies, Israel

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Women self-employment Ethnic entrepreneurship Ethnic enclaves

The study examines various forms of entrepreneurship of the Negev Bedouin women, mostly within the urban settings, in order to determine strategies applied in their entrepreneurial development. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with 28 women entrepreneurs, interviews with representatives of institutions supporting entrepreneurship and on participatory observations. The research draws on existing ethnic entrepreneurship theories and the family-embeddedness perspective, which allows for consideration of the relation between economic processes and family system characteristics and transformations which occur simultaneously and have reciprocal impact. The Bedouin women entrepreneurs are found to operate mainly within their urban ethnic enclaves, whereby difficult economic conditions combined with gender pressures create a mostly informal sector that complements insufficiencies of the formal market. These women develop their businesses by applying specific patriarchal connectivity strategies, which were developed due to strong impact of familial factors, such as: transitions in family structure, accessibility to family financial and human resources, adherence to the social codes and values. The impact of the last factor is visible on two levels: gender-separation of economic activities and networks (products and services addressed to women and children) and different roles of male and female family members. Whereas female members become employees or assistants, the male members keep their patriarchal positions as protectors and facilitators between the social requirements and exigencies of the economic activities. The connective strategies of Bedouin women entrepreneurs aim strongly at fulfilling their social roles as women, mothers and wives within the patriarchal order and as such, they bridge the gap between the strategies that previously accommodated desert condition subsistence living and the exigencies of the market economy of their contemporary semi-urban desert environment.

1. Introduction 1.1. General definition of the problem This study examines various forms of entrepreneurship of the Negev Bedouin women, mostly within the urban settings, in order to determine strategies applied in their entrepreneurial development. These women constitute a social group in Israel which suffers from a double marginalization – as Arab minority in a Jewish State and as women within a patriarchal tribal society (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2016). However, so far, there has been little scholarly work done in order to investigate current economic developments of these Bedouin women, specifically their entrepreneurial activities, notwithstanding, with a closer look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship in the Negev Bedouin context. Minority women entrepreneurship, specifically Arab and Muslim women, have received scarce attention by scholars (De Vita et al., ∗

2014), though research on female entrepreneurship in the non-European contexts has been growing since 2003 (Henry et al., 2016). Application of qualitative methods of investigation and paying more attention to the contexts in which women's business activities are embedded have allowed for better understanding of the great heterogeneity of women entrepreneurs and the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, religion and entrepreneurship; for instance: Essers and Benschop (2009), Al-Dajani and Marlow (2010), Tlaiss (2015). The Bedouin women entrepreneurs researched in this study were found to operate mainly within their urban ethnic enclaves where difficult political-economic conditions combined with social pressures create a mostly informal sector; which complements insufficiencies of the formal labour market. Considering previous studies on women's agency and strategies applied in business relative to their embeddedness in differing contexts (for example Shelton (2006), Brush et al. (2014), Roig et al. (2016)), our study aims at revealing the specific practices that Bedouin women

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Biernacka).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2017.10.004 Received 28 May 2016; Received in revised form 6 October 2017; Accepted 9 October 2017 0140-1963/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Biernacka, A., Journal of Arid Environments (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2017.10.004

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use in navigating between their enterprises and contextual constraints and opportunities. This research found that Bedouin women operate their businesses by applying specific patriarchal connectivity strategies, which were developed due to strong impact of familial factors, such as: transitions in family structure, accessibility to family financial and human resources, adherence to the social codes and values. The impact of the last factor is visible on two levels: gender-separation of economic activities and networks (products and services addressed to women and children) and different roles of male and female family members. Whereas female members become employees or assistants, the male members keep their patriarchal positions as protectors and facilitators between the social requirements and exigencies of the economic activities. This research contributes to the growing body of scholarly work on women entrepreneurs with applied qualitative methods of investigation focusing on their embeddedness and the interplay between contexts and the entrepreneurial processes. By focusing on the family embeddedness of the Bedouin women within their socio-cultural, family environment, this study will add to the extant body of knowledge on the contextualised women entrepreneurship shedding more light on the nature of gendered practices in business and enriching the currently scarce scholarship on minority ethnic women entrepreneurship and on the Bedouin women in Israel specifically.

of effects, depending on the local contexts. Aldrich and Cliff (2003) claim that transformations within family structures, shifts in timing of life-cycle processes, as well as changing roles of mothers and children, have impacts on creating new business opportunities. Their conceptual framework emphasizes relationships between the family's characteristics - such as ‘transitions, resources, norms and values’ - and the processes behind establishing new business entities. In recent studies on women entrepreneurship, understanding their embeddedness in context helps to uncover the roots of variations between men and women-led businesses. Such differences have been found to arise due to the gendered nature of the entrepreneurial process and could not have been explained in earlier studies conducted with gender as variable (GAV) approach in which the word 'gender' was equivalent to 'sex' and was not problematized (Henry et al., 2016). The degree of family embeddedness of businesses depends on roles and social expectations and as such, may be different for men and women, affecting the distribution of power, assets and availability of time spent on networking and business development (Brush et al., 2014). Studies on female entrepreneurs point to such factors as family support, role models, self-assurance and marriage as having significant impact on the ways that business is run by women (Nikina et al., 2015).

1.2. Theoretical approach of entrepreneurship as a process embedded in context

The abundant research on women entrepreneurship has been largly focused on women in developed countries, although a significant share of small and medium business activity is undertaken by women living in developing regions (De Vita et al., 2014). These studies focused mostly on women's characteristics, psychology, motivations, networking activities, performance and growth (De Vita et al., 2014). Since 2003, the field's research has expanded into emerging economies within the nonEuropean context, included immigrant women in developed countries and delved more into studying social, economic and institutional context in which female entrepreneurship is embedded (Henry et al., 2016). Although there are common characteristics of women entrepreneurs in developing countries, such as entrepreneurial propensity, sectoral concentration, preference for the domestic sphere as a site of production and the importance of family enterprise (Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2010), the new perspectives allowed for capturing the heterogeneity of women entrepreneurs, the differing contexts and their diversified impacts. The reciprocal relation of entrepreneurship and gender has been examined from two angles: how gender effects entrepreneurial processes, for example, the impact of societal legitimation on entrepreneur's activity (Singh et al., 2010) and how the gendered systems are effected by entrepreneurship (Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2013). A popular theme includes analyses of the microcredit programmes aimed at alleviating the poverty levels in developing regions among women and their families and their effect on women's status; finding that these efforts do not challenge patriarchal systems (Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2010), but keep women in home-based industries with lowpaid jobs (Erdoganaras et al., 2013), and may lead to debt accumulation (Girón, 2014). Women were also found to be more affected by informal institutions such as social norms and perceptions than men (Roig et al., 2016). Research on women's agencies proves that undertaking entrepreneurial efforts requires women to enact certain strategies and negotiation in situations challenging the existing social orders and to navigate between exigencies of business, family and society (Shelton, 2006) – a practice common to women globally. The number of studies of Muslim and Arab women entrepreneurs is still relatively scarce (De Vita et al., 2014), though examples include studies of women in their home countries (such as Lebanon - Jamali, 2009; Saudi Arabia - Ahmad, 2011) as well as Arab women ethnic entrepreneurship (Arab women in Spain - Roig et al., 2016; Muslim women in the Netherlands - Essers and Benschop, 2009) which point to

1.3. The gaps in literature on minority women's entrepreneurship

This research contributes to the growing body of scholarly work on women entrepreneurs with applied qualitative methods of investigation, with focus on their embeddedness and the interplay between contexts and the entrepreneurial processes. In the entrepreneurial theory, both individual action of entrepreneur and organizational operation are seen as dependent on their surrounding environment of institutions and social relations, which is called embeddedness. This term has been introduced by Karl Polanyi in 1944 as a characteristic of non-market economies and was later challenged by revealing the embeddedness of market economies as well (Gemici, 2008). The level of social embeddedness of businesses has been found to be higher in collective types of societies, where the interdependent self-construal (relative to the social norms) has a more dominant effect on the business decisions and results than business trainings or experience (Siu and Siu-chung Lo, 2011). Greater embeddedness has also been found among ethnic entrepreneurs (belonging to immigrant or an ethnic minority group), though it should be viewed rather as an outcome of intersectional influences (gender, minority status, class, etc.) than mere cultural characteristics (Anthias and Mehta, 2003). Studies on the complexity of institutional, economic, political and socio-cultural factors impeding on the ethnic entrepreneur led to the development of mixed-embeddedness theoretical approach, applied specifically to immigrant entrepreneurship (Brush et al., 2014). Entrepreneurial embeddedness as a theoretical concept has developed further to distinguish four types of embeddedness: structural, cultural, institutional and family embeddedness (Brush et al., 2014). Structural embeddedness refers to networks, alliances and ties. Institutional embeddedness places the entrepreneurial process in the context of formal and informal institutions, policies and legal systems. Cultural embeddedness focuses on the impact of norms, values, traditions and customs on entrepreneurship. Since cultural norms and values affect mental processes of decision making, cultural embeddedness is associated with the cognitive embeddedness approach and has proved to have both constraining and an enabling effects. In studies of entrepreneurship, the family embeddedness is a relatively recent approach (Aldrich and Cliff, 2003) and aims to re-establish the links between the seemingly divided worlds of work and family, the public and private domains. These mutual impacts were found globally to be significant for small and medium enterprises (Welsh, 2006), with a variety 2

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within their socio-cultural, family environment, this study will add to the extant body of knowledge on women entrepreneurship in its closest contexts, shedding more light on the nature of gendered practices in business and enriching the currently scarce scholarship on minority ethnic women entrepreneurship and on the Bedouin women in Israel specifically. Considering previous studies on women's agency and strategies applied in doing business in relation to their embeddedness in differing contexts, our study aims at revealing the specific practices that Bedouin women use in navigating between their enterprises and contextual constraints and opportunities.

the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship. The level of women's engagement in the labour market in Middle Eastern countries is still low in comparison to other regions (De Vita et al., 2014). Countries in this region also vary in levels of women entrepreneurship, with the Persian Gulf women taking the lead what is attributed to higher rates of financing and training available to them (Roig et al., 2016). Embeddedness in the patriarchal environment and patriarchal gender order is seen as the causal factor for the low rates of labour market participation by women (Ahmad, 2011). Despite the common perception of self-employment as a convenient option for combining work and family duties, Arab women entrepreneurs point out that finding this balance constitutes for them one of the greatest challenges in doing business (CAWTAR report 2007 cited in Roig et al., 2016). In their study on Palestinian women entrepreneurs in Jordan, Al-Dajani and Marlow (2010) found little spill-over of work into family life and concluded that entrepreneurship is done in a way that maintains the patriarchal order, rather than challenges it. Researchers have also explored interconnections between entrepreneurial identity of Muslim women and Islam (Tlaiss, 2015) and impacts of secular and Islamic feminism on entrepreneurs. The focus on gender and community justice of the Islamic feminist approach is seen as a stronger factor in reshaping the gender relations in both home and the public space (Özkazanç-Pan, 2015). In order to facilitate entrepreneurship, Muslim ethnic entrepreneurs were found to craft individual religious identities to resists dogmatic interpretations of Islam. A religious Muslim identification is believed to be stronger than ethnic identity and less confining (Essers and Benschop, 2009). Research on the Arab and Bedouin minority entrepreneurs in Israel finds a high degree of embeddedness of the community's businesses. Schnell and Sofer, 2002 revealed that Arab male entrepreneurship in Israel is over-embedded in their local-Arab milieu and under-embedded in the Israeli-Jewish milieu, which keeps their businesses within their ethnic enclave and prevents their growth and expansion into the interethnic market. A high level of social embeddedness is also a feature of Arab women entrepreneurs in Israel (Heilbrunn and Abu-Asbah, 2011). By taking into consideration the frequency of contacts with clients and clients' home locations, they showed that majority of Arab women's businesses depend on regular, locally-based residents. This factor was related to such business characteristics as operating in the service and retail sector, being homebased and unregistered. The over-embeddedness of this group was also characterized by a higher number of underaged children, lack of human, financial and social capital; the latter including also “social permission”. In Israel, Palestinian women entrepreneurs were found to have the smallest rates of entrepreneurship in comparison to women from other ethnic groups in Israel (veteran Jewish and immigrants from Former Soviet Union), they have more difficulties in obtaining financial capital and handling laws and regulations than other groups. These findings point to the lack of institutional support rather than group's inner factors that block the entrepreneurial potential of this group (Heilbrunn et al., 2014). Regarding the Bedouins in Israel, Meir and Baskind (2006) examined Bedouin male ethnic business entrepreneurship. They reported that employment of brothers, cousins, sons and nephews is the most common practice. Only 45% of the surveyed businesses employed women, of whom majority were Jewish women, and in other cases close family members: sisters and nieces. According to this study, doing business is considered to be a man's activity and women play very minor roles in bringing income. However, they noted cases where women's jewellery was used to provide the funding capital for the business. Women were also found to support their husbands' businesses in an informal manner. As for perceptions of women's entrepreneurship, such practice was mostly associated with marginal women (Jakubowska, 2000). By focusing on the family embeddedness of the Bedouin women

1.4. The context The arid environment of the northern part of the Negev Desert in Southern Israel has been for centuries home to the nomadic tribes that made use of its scarce natural resources to develop their economic subsistence system based on pastoralism and agriculture. The global processes of sedentarization, urbanisation and transformation into market economy have been intensified in this community by the political process of the creation of the State of Israel and the enforcement of the closed area in northeast part of the Negev 'siyagh' (Arabic word for “the permitted area”) in the 1960's, where the Bedouin tribes were relocated and concentrated under Israeli military control. Their mobility outside of the siyagh was restricted, requiring permits to leave for work and other purposes (Abu-Bader and Gottlieb, 2009). During the 1970's and 1980's, seven towns were designated for the Bedouin population in order to curb spontaneous settlement in the desert. The Bedouins could move there on the condition they gave up their claims to recognition of their rights to the land on which they had lived previously. Rejection of moving into the town resulted in becoming a resident of an unrecognized settlement (Medzini, 2012). The new towns (Rahat, Tel Sheva, Laquiya, Kseife, Hura, Segev Shalom, Arara) with a population of about 117900 (Bedouin Statistical Yearbook, 2010) lacked adequate infrastructure and were ill-designed in terms of Bedouin needs, including lack of employment, and negatively affected the gendered reconstruction of space, in terms of permitted and forbidden spaces for women (Fenster, 1999). The population size of the unrecognized settlements currently amount to about 90000 (Abu-RabiaQueder, 2016) and are considered illegal by the State, thus they often lack basic infrastructure: electricity, water, roads, transportation, access to health clinics and schools, etc., (Abu-Bader and Gottlieb, 2009). Since 2002 ten of the spontaneous Bedouin settlements were recognized as legal (Berkowitz, 2013), however, some services or building permissions are not provided. The residence of these Bedouin ethnic enclaves became dependent on the wage economy created in the Jewish sector. The new urban setting had relatively less impact on the employment of Bedouin men, since they had entered the labour market mostly in the low-paid jobs (while retaining some of their pastoral activities) much before the relocation to towns. Its effect was more adverse on the status of - Bedouin women. Apart from being located near the vicinity of developed centers, such as Beer Sheva, the new towns, with their poor infrastructure, had no economic alternative to offer for women. Traditionally, most of the work done by the Bedouin women within the society's pastoral, subsistent economy was serving the immediate needs of the family: preparing food, making clothes, weaving rugs and tents, tending the flock, milking animals, processing the milk and bringing water and wood. Their work significantly contributed to the economic production and reduced the household expenditure (Dinero, 1997). There was a division of tasks with female-male roles and there was interrelatedness and inter-dependence of men and women in agriculture and flock raising that created family cohesion and economic solidarity between the members (Abu-Rabia, 1994). Within the market economy context of the undeveloped urban structures, the balance was disrupted as there were no economic alternatives substituting pastoralist roles for women within their social context. 3

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active in the field of Bedouin women entrepreneurship and employment were interviewed in English: entrepreneurial training and funding providers (such as Arab Jewish Centre for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, MATI-Small Business Development Centers, The Koret Israel Economic Development Funds and SAWA - microcredit program directed at Bedouin Women in the Negev), and representatives of the Ryan Employment Centre in Hura and in Beer Sheva. Their experiences and perceptions were important to understand the institutional environment in which Bedouin women develop their businesses in the Negev, what kind of support they get and how the institutions perceive the situation and needs of these women. The interviews were complemented with participatory observation and unstructured interviews during home stays at some Bedouin families in Tel Sheva and Rahat; which included volunteering in an NGO ran by Bedouin women and participation in daily tasks of Bedouin entrepreneurs. The participatory observation method's aim was to get acquainted with the Bedouin society and their day-to-day experiences in order to more deeply understand the context of social relations and practices surrounding the women engaged in entrepreneurship.

Negev Bedouin women's process of inclusion into the labour market were found to be interwoven with women's family and social status, where single women of low family status are the first to be employed while married women and those of higher social status were not permitted to work (Kressel, 1992, 2006; Lewando-Hundt, 1984; Jakubowska, 2000), what exacerbated the effect of lack of infrastructure in the mostly underdeveloped desert region (Abu-Bader and Gottlieb, 2009). Although Bedouin women employment rates have been slowly growing, the rate of Arab women's participation in the labour market in the South is still the lowest in Israel, reaching 9% (Abu-Bader and Gottlieb, 2009) and those who succeed face “professional marginality” that blocks their development (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2016). These factors create the socio-political-economic environment of an ethnic enclave in which most of the Bedouin female entrepreneurs operate their economic activities (informal and formal) in which they apply “connective strategies” to overcome the seemingly incompatible: structural barriers, pressures of the market economy, familial and social expectations, rules of their enclave and their own aspirations. 2. Materials and methods

2.2. The characteristics of the researched population 2.1. Qualitative methods applied in the research The group of female entrepreneurs interviewed consists of twentyeight cases revealing various scenarios of life circumstances, as well as, ways of embarking on a business initiative. Their general characteristics are summarized in Appendix 1. Eighteen of the interviewed women were married, whereas the personal status of the rest of respondents was diversified: divorced (3), single (3) and abandoned ‘second wife’ (4). Most of the women had 5 or fewer children. The majority of the women in the sample were between 35 and 46 years-old. Most of these women started their businesses in their 30's, after already being married. The majority of respondents were local women (20), living in close vicinity to their family of origins, even after marriage. The remaining interviewees were either wives coming from other Bedouin locations (5) or from the Palestinian Territories (3). The level of education among the women interviewed is diversified and ranges from college and university level (4) to women with no formal education (4). Eleven women completed only primary education and nine graduated from high school. Only nine of the women interviewed participated in entrepreneurial training, and four of those women have registered their businesses officially. Among the women with higher education, one obtained a diploma in business marketing, one in accounting, one in education, and one started a degree in public administration but did not complete it. Vocational courses, which also provide knowledge on starting a business, were the most popular, especially the cosmetic, hairdressing and photography programmes. The types of work experience prior to the business activities of the interviewed women included managerial position in an NGO, work in Matnas (local cultural centre) secretarial jobs, educational positions, work in a textile factory or agriculture, and traditional household occupations (cooking, sewing, animal raising).

The proposed research was based on qualitative methods, including 28 semi-structured interviews, participatory observation and unstructured interviews (Bernard, 1988). The interviews with the women were semi-structured in order to allow the respondents to express their feelings and opinions, and to ensure that a basic set of aspects (personal and family status, education and work experience, motivation, business history, level of income, family involvement, institutional support and training) was addressed by all respondents. Qualitative methods in research into women's entrepreneurship are encouraged within the gendered perspective, as it helps to gain a better understanding of entrepreneurial work as a ‘gendered activity’ (Henry et al., 2016). The qualitative methods help to develop theories, rather than testing them; as one of the goals of this research was to look at the entrepreneurship of Bedouin women in order to explore its own unique features. The fieldwork began between May 2008 and January 2009 and continued from March 2010 until December 2011. A total of 28 Bedouin women entrepreneurs were interviewed. The interviewees lived and operated their activities mostly within the Bedouin towns of Rahat, Tel Sheva, Laqiya, Hura and Segev Shalom. Two of them lived and worked in unrecognized settlements. The interviewed entrepreneurs were selected using the snowball method (Bernard, 1988). This method resulted in recording of personal stories of women of various backgrounds and social status who ran their businesses in very distinct manners, ranging from a small income generating activity at home, to a producer who sells to customers nationally and abroad, or to a chain owner of two shops located on a main street of the town. The field work was conducted by the first author, MA student under the supervision of the two co-authors, between the years 2007–2008 and 2010–2012. The first author is a non-native to the Israeli BedouinJewish context, which helped to position the researcher outside of the hegemonic structure of relations between these groups. The two coauthors are both natives to Israel, however Prof. Kressel belongs to the Jewish majority, while dr. Abu-Rabia-Queder to the Bedouin minority. The interviews were carried out in Hebrew and a Hebrew-native interpreter was present translating into English. Since the translator was a woman in her early 60's and a mother of three daughters, it helped to establish more direct communication, especially with elder and married women who eagerly shared their family stories. In 3 cases where the respondents spoke mostly Arabic, other local women – their daughters or neighbours – helped with their Hebrew and English skills. All interviews were recorded and later transcribed for further analysis. Additionally, a number of representatives of institutions that are

3. Results and discussion 3.1. “Connectivity” as theoretical concept The analysis revealed the existence of specific strategies applied by the Bedouin women in their economic endeavours. These strategies, described below, have been divided into three main groups according to the specific roles: “family dependants” (wives, sisters, daughters), women (in relation to social codes and norms) and mothers. Decisionmaking strategies applied by Bedouin women in situations that constitute a challenge to traditionally accepted norms are named as “connective”, using the concept of “connectivity“- ability to connect with another person, with having fluid boundaries which are less vulnerable than fixed ones. This term was used by Suad Joseph, an anthropologist 4

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income, that she receives support and respect from her husband, leading to more cohesion in their marriage. In one case of a beauty salon, the husband opened the business in his own name and left its management to the wife. Women's income is not only invested in ‘their own’ shopping, but it is used as part of the investment in the house, buying a car, paying for children's education – including the extended family. It takes time, however, before this specific ‘purchasing power’ created by women's hands is recognized by the husband, who has been so far perceived as the sole breadwinner for the family. In this way, the small businesses bring the Bedouin women back to their capacities of contributing economically to their households, an ability lost in the early stages of forced urbanisation. The maintenance of the equilibrium in marital relations is well illustrated in a story of a woman who designs ‘Arab salons’ and sews and sells mattresses, pillows and other accessories related to house decorations. Before she embarked on her business, she worked in a local Bedouin NGO. She contributed with her salary to enlarging and equipping their home. When her husband decided to open his own business she sold her wedding gold to support him. He succeeded in his business to such extend that they could afford themselves luxuries, such as going on holidays. After some years she decided to quit her job in the NGO and turned her design hobby into a business.

specialising in issues of gender, families, children and youth in the Middle East, to build a concept of “patriarchal connectivity” (Joseph, 1999). It is a helpful concept in understanding social relationships within Arab societies, where the domination by males and the elderly is encoded in cultural constructs and in the corresponding codes of responding to it. Although “connectivity” - originally a Jungian term – implies neither hierarchy nor subordination of women and juniors, the patriarchal context entails certain cultural constructs and social relations which are then connectively supported as well as reproduced. Similarly, the connective strategies in business decision making as described in this work serve to explain the entrepreneurial process within the Arab-Bedouin collectivist-type of society and show both the social and family embeddedness of entrepreneurship, as well as, the connective nature of the entrepreneurs. The “connective” aspect underlines that there is no dysfunctionality implied by the relationality of the self as understood in Western, psychological terms of “the self”. Rather, it is a sign of maturity in social relations and thus, a maturity in entrepreneurial choices that should not be measured according to individualistic and economic efficiency scales. 3.2. Connective strategies as “family dependents” (wife-sister-daughter) 3.2.1. Challenging marital social roles as the family “breadwinner” The Bedouin women entrepreneurs operate within a very unfavourable socio-economic environment, where the structural obstacles are coupled with constraints stemming from the patriarchal and tribal social context, in which woman's behaviour casts light on the whole family (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2007). Consequently, her business is viewed in the context of the family and its status. Her economic activities constitute a challenge to the patriarchal order, where the husband is perceived as the family's main breadwinner, a status he seeks to uphold vis-à-vis his associates. During an interview with the representative of SAWA micro-loan programme for Bedouin women, the manager of the programme (a Bedouin woman herself) explained the approach she took, based on her own experience, in her dealing with Bedouin women entrepreneurs and promoting family advancement as a whole, as part of the individual advancement of the woman.

“I was always afraid, but kept on encouraging myself. My husband was very supportive, he would come with me to buy the materials, he would advise me what to buy and with what I should wait. I used his visa card to buy the sewing machine. (…) He accompanied me to a material fair in Turkey for 4 days. (…) Me and my husband share a common account, but I always know how much there is in the account. We have a fax and the report from the account comes to us and we look at it and discuss it. My husband earns more than me, but then I help him a lot in the house and with the kids. (…)Even if his brothers need to borrow NIS 11000, I am ok with it and I know that if my children would need money, they will also help them and return it. So I do not protest to my husband about it.” (Arab salon designer and shop owner, Laqiya, 24.01.2011) The woman does not see the income from her business as something of individual value. She acknowledges the rights of her husband and his family to draw from these resources, understanding the reciprocal character of family relations. Although she admits that her husband's earnings are higher, she explains that her lower income is compensated by her additional work at home. She understands her contributions to the household not only in terms of incomes, but rather the total complementarity of tasks, which include household chores and childcare. The negotiations of statuses, roles and individual versus familial interests found in this research resemble findings in other studies. For example Singh et al. (2010) show that the social perceptions of entrepreneurship are obstacles which need to be negotiated. Al-Dajani and Marlow (2010) pointed that Palestinian refugee women in Jordan need to negotiate their subjected identity at home in a way that it does not challenge the patriarchal order, even if it means hiding the truth that a women's income is higher than the husband's. On the other hand, women's ability to contribute to family income in situations of poverty has been also found to be the factor for increasing social acceptance for women-led entrepreneurship. Economic empowerment is probably only the first step, and there is a further need for programmes which will change the power relations at home, giving women more control over their income (Kantor (2005). According to the findings in this research, the Bedouin women struggle to negotiate societal approval for their economic activities by making the individual issue part of the family, in bringing additional income at the disposal for nucleus and extended family needs. Comparatively, other studies found that women tend to have more ethical and socially responsible approach to their business (De Vita et al., 2014) and that a communitarian approach in entrepreneurship programmes provided by

“They (Bedouin women who start their activities) have wisdom to look far into the future, to foresee the conflict and to try not to let it happen. I know myself, that when I was taking the decision to continue studying to MA, my husband was just a driver in a private business. So I encouraged him to do his BA, and get a better positioned and responsible job in security – he did his military service – and thus, I could continue with my MA, as I knew my status cannot be higher than the one of my husband, since it would make the people talk bad about us. So the women (who start businesses) also think of delegating some part of what they do to their husbands and to make them responsible for important tasks so they are not left behind.” (Representative of SAWA, microcredit programme for Bedouin women. Rahat, 22.03.2011) In her own case, this woman saw herself as a part of the family that she created with her husband and knew that in her society, the status of the family comes together with the status of her husband and not the wife. Having a wife who occupies a higher position would not bring him honour. For many women, especially those with little education and no previous work experience, proving their money-making skills is a step they need to overcome while starting their business. Many women from the most marginalized Bedouin families, who came to SAWA to obtain a loan of NIS 1000–2000 to start a small activity in their house, cannot count on their husbands' support. Starting a new business is very invasive for a woman's house and family, as she needs to introduce changes to make space to do her activities. It is only after she generates 5

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above the economic performance of individual goals.

Islamic feminist organizations tend to be more successful in changing women's status both at home and in the public (Özkazanç-Pan, 2015). As presented above, Bedouin women gain in income, respect and permission to be present in the entrepreneurial domain. At the same time, they manage to maintain the equilibrium of gender statuses, inscribed in gender roles distributions, which will be discussed below in relation to the roles of mothers.

3.3. Connective strategies as women in relation to traditional roles and gender-segregation Fenster (1999) showed that women's accessibility to the public space of the ethnic enclaves within the recognized towns has been additionally complicated by their culturally insensitive planning; which made the masculine public (such as parks, other neighborhoods and town centers) also “multi-tribal” and thus rendered these spaces even more “forbidden”. The home and neighbourhood remained the only “permitted” areas for Bedouin women, though women associated these spaces with feelings of “suffocation” due to their density of population. However, commercial and service centers located on non-tribal land, accessibility to public transport and heterogeneity of women's statuses (age, social status, different mobility norms in various tribes) were factors that helped making public spaces more permittable for women (specifically in Rahat). The entrepreneurship of Bedouin women is also embedded in these contexts, which lead to creation of new permittable (Fenster, 1999) spaces, expanding female networks and relying on female family human resources.

3.2.2. The 'protectors': fathers, brothers and husbands as agents for women entrepreneurship The examples above suggest that obtaining the equilibrium while challenging the bread-winning roles often entails strengthening men's status in their superior roles. Fathers, brothers and husbands are the ones who can help the women to extend the limitations set by social requirements and protect her against the society's watchful eye. These responsibilities may result in attitudes of both support and constraint. Similar roles were described also by Abu-Rabia-Queder (2008) in case of pioneering women in education and employment. Employment of brothers in a woman's business did not occur in the studied examples. But a partnership or help and protection from brothers, fathers and husbands are frequent phenomena. One of the innovative professions that have developed among the Bedouin women in the Negev, is a wedding photographer. This function combines a new demand for keeping memories of those special days in the form of pictures and films, with the cultural requirements of separation of sexes during wedding celebrations. A wedding photographer from Rahat faced strong opposition from her brother to go out to work at night at a different town, despite the fact that she was already married and her husband was very supportive in this case. Her brother agreed to drive her with his car to every wedding. After three months, when he understood the nature of the work, he agreed to letting her get a driving license and gave her his car as a present. Another story of a successful business owner illustrates how an unmarried woman manoeuvres between entrepreneurial and patriarchal challenges. With her father's consent, she managed to build a full-fledged, tourist-oriented business with a wide network of connections extending outside the ethnic enclave to the rest of the country and abroad. The business is located on a piece of land that belongs to her father. Although she is now in her forties, she needs to ask her father (or in case when he is abroad her mother) for permission whenever she needs to participate in a commercial event, tourist fair, arrange issues related to packaging or meet the accountant. She needs to be accompanied by a male relative. During events that take place in the evenings outside her locality, her elder brother usually drives her. He opposed her having a car, although she obtained a driving licence a long time ago. It is her dream to have a car and its realization would mark, not only an economic success, but also, would increase her own independent status in the family. She has chosen not to push this matter, as it breeds conflicts between her brother and father and she wants to avoid it. She claims that if she ever gets married, it would have to be to someone who will grant her more freedom than what she can currently enjoy. Expecting more freedom from a future husband is currently a theme discussed during settling marriage agreements. Joseph (1994) describes the brother/sister relationship as both of love/nurturing and power/violence nature, where men and women reproduce and relearn the patriarchal structures, inscribed in father/ daughter relationships. Both brothers and fathers (or the next closest male relatives in their absence) maintain crucial roles in the honour/ shame complex, being responsible for restoring the family honour and the protection and well-being of the sister/daughter. Findings in literature suggest that women entrepreneur's ability to speak up to the male relative, gaining more self-confidence and assertiveness are important forms of women's empowerment learnt through the business development process (Özkazanç-Pan, 2015; Jamali, 2009; Al Dajani and Marlow, 2010). However, the examples above point to a connectivity in decision making – where the cohesiveness on the family level is placed

3.3.1. Bedouin women's traditional roles and permittable spaces in commercial activities The scope of women's activities encompasses traditional women's home occupations and services targeted at women's and children's needs and tends to be an extension of women's traditional, domestic roles or women-only services. The economic entrepreneurial activities of Bedouin women in this study are: food preparation (bread, milk, cheese), sewing clothes and clothes repairing, kindergartens or prekindergartens, tents for tourists, shops with clothes and food, jewellery, interior design, sewing mattress's covers and pillows, hairdressing, cosmetics, bride salons, DJs and photographer's services for weddings. The low-skills occupations such as food preparation and sewing were typical for women between 45 and 55 years old with none or basic education. All the activities described in this study are located within the public or private space of the Bedouin ethnic enclave, although some are oriented towards non-ethnic clientele (mostly in the tourism sector). Only one woman in this sample (who is of non-Bedouin origin) runs her activities in another Bedouin town which is not the place of her residence. Other businesses relied on co-ethnics. Bedouin women's entrepreneurial operations stem from their gendered experiences and traditionally accepted domestic roles. As such, they adhere to the gender-segregation expectations, however creatively, finding new niches and opportunities (Bedouin cosmetics, DJs and photographers). They also slowly expand to 'men-only' professions, such as work contractors. For example, SAWA provided loans to a woman who invested in a car to transport women to work in the agriculture sector (not interviewed in this sample). The new areas of business activities that require learning modern skills, such as photography and wedding DJ, although seasonal, tend to bring good income of about NIS 20000 within a month. For comparison, the average income of Arab women in Israel is 3500NIS per month, see Schnell and Shdema (2016). Despite the fact that courses leading to these professions were supported by the Islamic authorities as permittable and their adherence to gender segregation rules practiced during the weddings, these occupations may be still socially loaded with a perception of a low status: “It is not only if they (the girls) want to KEEP the traditions, they live in the whole community that will make them keep it and they cannot go against them. The photographers, it is not related with the tradition. It is something new. Before, they would bring someone from the West Bank but it was considered to be something CHEAP – 6

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3.3.2. Employment of female members Most Bedouin women rely on family members, in particular on their sisters, as a pool for employees and assistants in their businesses, especially in cases of women who live in the same locality as their family of origin. This is also acknowledged by the business course providers, economic advisors, and micro-credit providers. Within the researched sample, there were 12 women who had at least one employee or an assistant. In two cases where an unrelated non-kin woman was employed, the business owner either lived in a town different than her own kin, and thus the people whom she trusted were her friends from the area, or the business required an employee with certain skills, such as hairdressing and cosmetics. There were ten cases where family members were employed or assisted in the business: sisters (5 cases), niece (2), daughter (1), a son (1) and a more distant family relative (1). These data suggest strong preference for engaging family members in the business. One of the business women employs two sisters and one niece (her sister's daughter). She points to the importance of existing relationships in the family which underlie the decisions on employment: The relationship in the family - she (a woman) likes her mother's family more than her father's family; the woman will make her kids to like her family than her husband's family. This is against the Islam. The sheikh says we should not do it but we do. Not only in business. Because I have good relations with them (my own relatives), this is the start. If I had a good relationship with the others (in-laws), I would ask them to help. (Personal communiqué, 26.05.2010, female, business owner, 40) The result of such a cooperation is that the sisters, who are married and live with their husbands' families, increase their visits with their younger children to their original homes (where the businesses are located). Despite belonging to their nuclear families, their small children keep on being socialized in their mother's families, and by having common meals, they are still part of the household economic expenses. On the other hand, family employees lead to a conflict of power. My female respondents admit that there are no ‘business relations’, and the sisters rarely take ‘orders’ as unrelated workers would do. Especially, if efficiency, quality and time are important. Such conflicts may affect the family life and the business. One applied solution was to pay the workers per item of work and not per hour. This helped, though the control of an efficient production process is difficult to keep and becomes a barrier in business expansion. Family workers feel freer to demand very flexible work time, or even refuse, if there are other unresolved conflicts between them and their employer. Although the entrepreneurial trainers try to encourage the women to pass the family boundaries, this is rather difficult in practice in a small business. First of all, it is the family that constitutes the closest social network. Secondly, the fact that the female relatives tend to be the ones with least employment opportunities on the one hand, and strong loyalty to the family on the other, leave little choice for hiring external working hands. Studies on the employment of family members showed that this practice has a rather impairing effect on micro and small enterprises, especially if they were the main source of income (Cruz et al., 2012). Such practices were associated with increased sales, however, the profits were reduced at the same time. Within the Bedouin context, employment of female family members can be viewed also as having an empowering effect on the larger family, by providing income to women who otherwise would not have other options. Such economic assessments should thus consider the business within the larger context of its embeddedness, keeping in mind that the connective approach will imply a strategy that is beneficial in a more holistic rather than individual meaning.

the kind of work was of a low status. It is using the girls in a way that makes them be cheap. I would never allow my daughter to become a DJ.” (Personal communiqué, 25.07.2010, female, business owner, 40) The hours of work and necessity to work for other families are obvious violations of social norms. Those who travel far and late at night do so with the consent and assistance of their brothers or husbands, who in this way protect their public visibility. The location of a beauty salon in proximity to health clinics or mother and child centers make its accessibility easier for women customers, who can visit it on the way to the medical centre, without asking for specific permission from their husbands. Women running tourist-oriented businesses remain cautious not to create ‘unacceptable’ situations of being alone with male visitors. Most of these business sectors of the Bedouin women are extensions of domestic roles, similar to findings on low-income women in microenterprises in other countries such as Tunisia (Berry-Chikhaoui, 1998) or the USA Smith-Hunter 2006). They also tend to provide goods and services for the needs of women and children. Abu-Rabia-Queder (2007) called this strategy ‘reviving tradition’ in their struggle for economic survival: older women who lacked access to education adhere to traditional roles and products, such as weaving traditional rugs, or they create professions which can suite the traditional gender separation by offering products and services only to the women's sector or children. In Jordan, resorting to traditional crafts was also connected with greater social permission for women to engage in business (AlDajani and Marlow, 2010). Respecting the societal demands regarding patriarchal control and gender-segregation gives the woman legitimization to advance in her economic activities and becomes a ‘source of power and not oppression’ (Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2007, p. 75). Finding creative niches resulting from gender segregation norms like driving school with female instructors or resorting to self-employment to avoid working for a male boss were also an advantage for Muslim women in the Netherlands (Essers and Benschop, 2009). Özkazanç-Pan (2015) states that Islamic feminism, based on the notions of gender and community justice rather than individual achievement, has a power to create legitimization for women's economic practices and thus, has a greater potential for dismantling the gender relations at home as well as in the public space. Considering the heterogeneity of identities constructed by Muslim women entrepreneurs at the inter-sections of gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship (for example Essers and Benschop, 2009) there are ambient possibilities for business development. The central public space within the ethnic enclave of the Bedouin towns seems to be perceived as the ‘permitted space’ (Meir and Gekker, 2011) in which female entrepreneurs may find opportunities to expand their home businesses. The findings of this research can shed a new light on Fenster's findings (1999) who showed that women in Bedouin towns are confined to their neighbourhoods and those who frequented the centre in the city of Rahat were in minority. Almost twenty years later this research has revealed that more and more women open their businesses, not only in their neighbourhoods, but also in the town centers. Rahat's central market is visited by non-local customers who shop also in women-owned businesses. The factors which turned this public space into permitted space in which women entrepreneurs could find their niche may include: the relative proximity to their homes, the existing demand for culturally-specific products and services and that social norms are expected to be adhered to much more than in the nonethnic localities. Although women enter with their businesses to central locations within the towns, and thus enter the ‘public’ space, they do so by creating a feminine space of their own that starts to legitimize the presence of Bedouin women as business owners in the public sphere separated but not secluded.

3.3.3. Creating female networks in a gender-separated environment Embeddedness in a local milieu may have both positive and negative implications if we consider the marketing networks that it creates. Bedouin women who operate their business from home on a small scale, 7

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The husband's family's attitudes to women's work may have strategic consequences for childcare. A woman who opened a hairdresser's salon in Laqiya, with financial support of her husband, admits that she would prefer to open the shop in Rahat, which is her hometown. Her own parents support her ideas and she could entrust her children to them while being at work. Her husband's family oppose her idea, demanding that she stay at home with her kids. As a result, her children come from school straight to her salon and she keeps a shorter working schedule between 9:00–15:00 and says that she does not want to advertise and attract more customers than she has, as she feels responsible to dedicate her time to her own children. This woman was unwilling to leave her youngest children in kindergarten. She admits that:

reach customers who are usually women from their neighbourhood and relatives. In most cases, women advertise by means of word-of-mouth supplemented with a business card. Only in a few cases they advertised in a local newspaper. One informant, who used to sell cosmetics as a brand company representative, pointed out, that the social norm prevented her from door-to-door sales. Those women, who were interested in the products, had to come to her and spread the word further. According to representatives of the micro-credit programme SAWA, the Bedouin women's businesses usually start from home and only after the businesses reach certain maturity or as more inter-ethnic links are made, the location is changed to a more central one in the town. The creation of a mutual support group in paying back the loans has also been found to be an important factor for sustainability of their businesses, similarly in Jordan (Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2010). Reliance on close neighbourhood networks works well in cases of selling daily products, such as milk and bread, and may bring in a steady income. The most difficult items to market are traditional crafts, like ornaments on walls and colourful trays used for distributing sweets during the henna nights of the wedding week. Lack of connections to seek out potential customers is mentioned as a factor preventing the women from selling their products to shops outside of their own town. Locally established tourist businesses and NGOs help other local women to sell their handcrafts. It is noticeable that the established businesses, as well as NGO's, are usually those who cross the inter-tribal limitations and serve customers or cooperate with women (and sometimes men) from different families, as well as from other ethnic groups. Developing networks that would reach beyond close relatives and friends is an important factor in the development of their businesses, as it is very often related with more investments and may lead to the decision to register the business officially. Development of female networks among Bedouin women increased with the settled way of living and dependence of men on the wage work outside of home, which opened for them new possibilities for group activities (such as shopping in the town that could not be done independently) and access to information by means of new visiting patterns (Lewando-Hundt, 1984). The dependency of Bedouin women on female (including family) networks resembles characteristics of other ethnic entrepreneurs (example of Indian women entrepreneurs in New Zealand, Pio, 2007) and may be the factor for their over-embeddedness, and similar to what has been found for other Arab male and female entrepreneurs in Israel (Schnell and Sofer, 2002; Heilbrunn and AbuAsbah, 2011). According to Crowell (2004), the female networks, although wider in comparison to male networks, have also been found to be weaker in terms of access to business support and information. Overdependency on female family networks may hold back women's businesses from new opportunities, unless such networks get strengthened by expansion of “weak ties” - meaning acquaintances and social networks beyond “strong ties” in family circles. More formal workplaces for women within the towns and more institutional support for women's networking would develop Bedouin women's competences as well as business contacts. These could be factors enabling women to cross the family and tribal divisions and could help them establish more diversified customer base, even within the co-ethnic circles. Increased presence of Bedouin women in local, regional and national institutions for entrepreneurial development would be of value.

“Making a profit is not everything, it is not the most important thing. What counts, is what kind of an example you give to your children, what kind of a role-model you will be for them. The next generation depends on it.” (Married, owner of hairdresser salon, Laqiya, 06.12.2010) This woman's example shows how women with small children seek profit-making opportunities on one hand, and on the other are pressured to fulfil their roles as mothers. Other women feel that putting small children into kindergarten instead of bringing them up at home, could be equivalent to neglecting them. “Women work, but still, they have to work in the house. The husband cannot do housework, as the woman does, he cannot take care of the children in the same way as women do, and to make money at the same time, so in the end, the woman is the person who is the manager of the house. “ (Married, DJ, part-time employed as assistant in kindergarten, Rahat, 06.01.2011) Women themselves feel responsible for this task, and as long as their children will need it, they will not make an effort to expand their businesses so as not to lose the balance. The women, who decided to expand their businesses, did it at a time when their children were old enough not to require their attention at home so much, which will be discussed in the last section on family life-cycle. Another woman, who spent her lifetime working in an NGO and now created her own business, admits that one of the results of the advancement of women is that it takes her away from her children. In her own experience, leaving her children for the whole day and not being able to fulfil her role as a mother was one of the biggest inner struggles. Looking back, however, she admits that despite these difficulties, the results of these changes are worth it. Such a strong investment in children is not only dictated by social expectations, but in case of older women, it is also a way of securing one's future. Asked if they save money for their own retirements, the women say no. They invest everything in their children, expecting that they will be the ones to care for them when they get old. A woman, whose husband abandoned her eight years before, runs a clothes store in Rahat's shuq. If she saves any money, it is because she has two sons that need to get married. Two other daughters are already married and live in Ramle. A third daughter, 18 years old, is not married and studies. The shop owner thinks she will leave the store to her, once she retires. She made an important investment of buying the land for her children in Rahat and she currently pays back 3000 NIS per month. The wellbeing of her children, once they grow up, is her only guarantee for the time when she is too old to work. These examples, point out how central the family is in women's perceptions about their roles as entrepreneurs. Whether they are employed, self-employed or engage in academic careers, it is very difficult to separate themselves from responsibilities towards their families which, in the case of the Bedouin women – needs to be considered in their wider, social context. In the research on work and family balance in female entrepreneurship, Smith-Hunter (2006) found that self-employment

3.4. Connective strategies in combining mother and business roles Although the Bedouin urban settings lead to the creation of more independent, nuclear families, parents in-law may still exercise pressures due to the conflict between women's engagement in business and their roles as wives and mothers. Parents in-law, who are concerned about their son's social standing as it is dependent on his wives behaviour, may oppose or be distrustful of their daughter in-law's business ideas. 8

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The connective strategies enumerated in the previous sections are strongly related to family and social-embeddedness of the entrepreneur. The family-embeddedness perspective (Aldrich and Cliff, 2003) encourages the researcher of entrepreneurship to examine also the impact of transformations within family structures, shifts in timing of life-cycle processes and changing in roles of mothers and children on establishing and developing of business ventures. As in the provided examples, these transitions signify a shift in the context, which in turn, may affect the perception of the entrepreneur on opportunities and obstacles, such as change in status and social expectations related to it. When such transitions are connectively explored, they reveal potential for a balanced business development.

enables women to balance their work and family life (in the Western context). Al-Dajani and Marlow (2010) show that the work-family interface is considered as a stressful factor, and family concerns are expected to prevail over the business development, which, in turn, keeps women from earning more. Otherwise, women's economic activities do not receive social approval (Jamali, 2009). The socio-cultural context, with all its social roles and expectations, influences not only the acceptance of female entrepreneurship (De Vita et al, 2014) but also its feasibility - capability and confidence to act - and desirability - beliefs in socio-cultural support, expectancy for performance and outcomes (Brush et al., 2014). Thus, female and male decisions on creating and running a business will be different, as well as, their notions of perceived success. Similarly, in the Bedouin women's case, the work-family balance means keeping their working hours under a certain threshold and not expanding their profits. Özkazanç-Pan (2015) claimed that if the roles in the private sphere are not negotiated, then the economic activity does not bring about change. The question arises, as to what is the time span for change to be expected, since the connectivity concept implies that social structures are rather be reproduced than challenged.

4. Conlcusion The Bedouin women living in the Negev desert have been subjected to a number of political and socio-economic transformative processes that led them from a pastoralist, subsistence model of economy to rapid urbanisation and self-employment guided by market economy rules. As entrepreneurs, they are effected by their ethnic status as a minority in Israel and as women within the Bedouin, patriarchal society. This paper demonstrated results of a qualitative study of 28 Bedouin women entrepreneurs, exploring the family embeddedness of their entrepreneurial practices. These women were found to navigate between the two domains of family and business by means of certain strategies, which were called “connective” to underline their unifying nature. Family embeddedness of the Bedouin female entrepreneurs revealed itself on a level associated with their status, vis-à-vis, other family members (fathers, brothers and husbands), with social values and norms related to gender separation and with the social expectations related to the roles of mothers. Female networks, expanded due to the processes of settling down and urbanisation, enable women to find customers, employees and assistants, though these aspects pose also limitations for business development. These strategies serve to minimize or avoid conflicts by: operating businesses from home or nearby locations, by creating feminine spaces and networks and by expanding the social perceptions of permitted roles through maintaining equilibrium of statuses among spouses and obtaining permission and support from their male relatives. The findings bring to light the complexity of the family embeddedness of the Bedouin women's businesses. Considering the findings by Heilbrunn et al. (2014), who showed no significant difference in terms of family support between Palestinian, veteran Jewish and Former Soviet Union immigrant, one could argue for a further qualitative investigation of this topic among these three groups in Israel. The shift, from a strictly domestic space into operating from nondomestic space within an ethnic enclave, is often a marker of their development and maturity as entrepreneurs and may be accompanied by other changes in the family life-cycle. The micro-loan programme SAWA, operating in the Negev, strengthens this process by providing financial support and guidance for activities that start from home, as it is considered a stage in the entrepreneurial process. Although Bedouin women businesses rely on co-ethnics for customers, a distinction should be made between locals and non-locals (visitors from other Bedouin towns or nearby unrecognized settlements) and further research could examine such links as important markers of business development of Bedouin women. This is especially important while considering the competition of Bedouin women's businesses. Heilbrunn et al. (2014) found that Palestinian women businesses suffer less difficulties in tackling their competitors due to their concertation in the ethnic enclave. However, due to the rising number of similar businesses within the enclave (such as hairdressers, beauty salons, etc) the local and ethnic competition is growing while the local markets are limited. Castelles and Portes (1986) claimed that family strategies and informal economy are the basis for economic survival during periods of

3.5. Family-life cycles and their impact on entrepreneurial decisions The cases in this study, show that family transitions impacted women's work experience and created female role models, which in turn, could affect their perceptions of entrepreneurship and economic decisions in adulthood. In the majority of cases, the women were raised in large families (around 10 siblings, with a majority of sisters in many cases). It resulted either in an early marriage (at the age between 15 and 17) or in taking up a job in agriculture or packaging industries, which delayed their marriage. Women born first or second took the responsibility of earning money that enabled their siblings to study longer. In 8 cases, the respondents' mother became the heads of household due to polygamy (5) or father's death (3). These mothers worked outside (cleaning or in agriculture) or started a small business activity at home, thus creating the first role models for their offspring. Two women benefited from strong support from their fathers. In one case, the father taught her to deal with accounts so that she could help him in his businesses, as his sons were still too young to support him. The entrepreneurial decisions of the women in this study have also been found to be related (in twelve cases) to fluctuation in family structures and their own life-cycles: getting married, divorced, becoming an abandoned wife, having school-age children, disabled or unemployed husband. A married woman with 3 children opened her own salon in a rented building away from home, once her family obligations at home were reduced: “All my children are already big and in school, and I wanted to do something else, not just being a housewife.” (Married, 32, hairdresser salon, Laqiya, 03.11.2011) There were three instances of women who took to money-making as a result of losing the material support from their husbands, who got married to new wives. Two of the businesses showed enormous potential, leading the women to open stores in central locations of town and were motivated by the necessity to provide for their children. Another woman described how she worked in a textile factory when single to help her widowed mother and 4 siblings. After marriage, at the age of 24, she was forbidden to work outside and continued to sew at home. Her income was essential for the family's daily needs, since her husband's earnings were almost completely invested in a 4-story family building. Eight years prior to the interview, at the age of 42 and with 5 grown-up children, her husband left her for another wife. She started trading clothes in the local open market and after five years, she moved to a small store. To expand her business, she obtained 3 loans from SAWA micro credit programme. Currently, she enjoys customers, not only from her own town, but also from other Bedouin localities. 9

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particular circumstances. Bedouin women contribute in ways which go beyond simple ‘surviving’, such as: renovating homes, investing in a real estate, buying cars or educating their children. This earning power helps them to win the acceptance of their husbands, brothers and parents in-law. These achievements stand in contrast to the general perception of a business owner as a male role, dominant in the Bedouin society (Meir and Baskind, 2006). For this reason, it would be worthwhile to give more public visibility to the success stories of the Bedouin women and creating more role models. This could strengthen their impact on the development of the potential of the next generations of Bedouin men and women and tackle the stereotypes and discriminatory behaviours within the larger society that still undermine their achievements.

rapid urbanisation. The Bedouin women entrepreneurs seem to resemble these trends: they apply family-focused strategies, operate mostly in the informal economy (which should be considered as a stage in a process rather than their permanent feature). They also combine resources available to them from both formal (part-time employment, social security, other family members' income) and informal sectors. Although the fear of losing the stable income in form of social benefits is a blockade for business registration, provision of professional counselling and small financial loans (such as SAWA programme) is a way to overcome such obstacles (Allasad Alhuzail, 2013). Following the findings of Schnell and Shdema (2016) regarding the high impact of peripheriality and social integration capital (including social networks) on Arab inclusion in the Israeli labour market, it could be recommended to increase institutional support for strengthening Bedouin women's networks to help their businesses grow outside of the family and tribal (ethnic) circles, making these entrepreneurs less embedded and confined. Abu-Rabia-Queder (2016) showed how highly skilled and educated, professional women suffer from tribal and gender penalties, sustained additionally by lack of institutional support in overcoming them which blocks their achievements. That poses a question, whether the connective strategies applied by the less-educated and impoverished women who run low-income businesses are their leverage or will become barriers if the wider political set-up remains blind to their

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Mrs Mariam Abu Rqaiq and Mrs Galila Elkrenawi for their invaluable support during fieldwork, Mrs Yochevet Gordon for her generous contribution as interpreter during research and to The Robert H. Arnow Centre for Bedouin Studies and Development and Erasmus Mundus Programme for the financial support.

Appendix 1. List of interviewees

No Age Personal Status

Origins

Education background

Entrepreneurial Course

Location of business

Legal status

Commercial Sector

1

46

married

Local

8th grade

None

home

milk selling

2

46

married

Local

8th grade

None

home

3

55

Local

None

None

home

4

32

abandoned wife married

Local

hischool

None

home

5

41

single

Local

BA

MATI

home

6

54

married

Local

None

None

home

7

45

divorced

highschool

None

home

8

38

married

West Bank Local

highschool

SAWA

home

9 38 10 36

married married

Local Local

highschool highschool

None SAWA

close-to-home close-to-home

11 42

married

None

None

close-to-home

12 40 13 38 14 32

single married married

Nonlocal Local Local Local

BA above highchool highschool

MATI None None

close-to-home out-of-home out-of-home

15 37

abandoned wife married

Local

highschool

AJEEC

out-of-home

Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Registered Nonregistered Nonregistered Registered Registered Nonregistered Registered

Local

8th grade

None

out-of-home

abandoned wife married

Nonlocal Local

none

None

out-of-home

8th grade

None

out-of-home

abandoned wife married

Nonlocal Local

8th grade

SAWA

out-of-home

8th grade

Beer Sheva

out-of-home

16 48 17 35 18 40 19 50 20 32

10

Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Nonregistered Registered

sewing sewing and traditional ornaments tourism tourism sewing and traditional ornaments bred making sewing and teaching sewing NGO hairdressing tourism cosmetics and tourism interior design, mattresses clothes shop wedding photographer clothes shop clothes shop and foodstore wedding DJ clothes shop hairdressing

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21 30

married

22 32

married

23 38 24 38 25 39

married single married

26 45 27 42 28 46

divorced divorced married

Nonlocal Local Local Local Nonlocal Local Gaza West Bank

8th grade

Beer Sheva

out-of-home

Registered

hairdressing

8th grade

None

out-of-home

hairdressing

8th grade highschool highschool

None None None

out-of-home out-of-home out-of-home

Nonregistered Registered Registered Registered

BA 8th grade 8th grade

None None SAWA

out-of-home out-of-home out-of-home

Registered Registered Nonregistered

NGO NGO NGO NGO NGO jewllery selling

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