Contribution to the Collective by Religious-Zionist Adolescent Girls

The act of contribution to the collective raises a major dilemma in contemporary religious Zionism in regard to girls and women: how to maintain their traditional restriction to the domestic sphere while allowing participation in national tasks that demand their presence in the male-dominated public sphere. From in-depth interviews conducted with 37 seventeen-year-old religious girls studying in a uni-sex residential boarding high school, we uncover the manner in which these girls, as thy proceed to young adulthood, experience the act of contribution in three social arenas: the Bnei Akivayouth movement, national service and the domestic sphere. Our analysis reveals a gradual recruitment to contribution during the passage from girlhood to womanhoodparalleled by the gradual intensification of feminine^J qualities. This process facilitates the girls³ participation in the public sphere without challenging the traditional gender dichotomy. It also constitutes a central practice by means of which religious-Zionist society recruits the girls to the Israeli collective yet keeps them within its own socio-cultural boundaries.