The Struggle of Women Workers in the Paving and Construction Industries, 1920-1940: Belonging, Differentiation, and Power-Building

In the 1920s and 1930s, women in the urban Yishuv fought for their inclusion in the paving and construction industries. This was one of the most prominent struggles of women, which pitted them against market forces, conservative attitudes, and the efforts to preserve male dominance that had pushed women to the margins. Their goal was to integrate within the centers of economic activity and social mobility. The successes and failures of this struggle, presented here for the first time, are a significant part of the history of the gender struggle narrative, the paving and construction industries in Israel, and urban labor during the Mandate period. An examination of the five main strategies in the struggle reveals two primary axes. The first operated according to the logic dictated by capitalist market principles, including several classic strategies used by minorities in the labor market. These were based on leveraging the advantages of social and economic inferiority, and efforts focused primarily on integration into the workforce and its governing institutions. The second operated according to the political logic of power-building and was based on an analysis of power structures within the Zionist labor movement, and the replication of separatist methods of operation. The women's labor movement as a whole and each individual female worker on her own navigated their way through the limited space between belonging to the general labor force and gender-based differentiation. In this article, I will show that the processes of integration into the labor movement actually solidified women's marginal status in the labor market, while differentiation processes strengthened their political standing and improved their conditions within it.