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Although women play a significant role in non-profit organizations as employees, volunteers, and clients, there is insufficient knowledge about these women and their unique work experiences in the current era, which is characterized by outsourcing of social services. This study explored work experiences among women in professional care settings of social service non-profit organizations (SSNPOs). Forty in-depth interviews were conducted with women with postsecondary education working as care professionals (such as social workers and occupational therapists) in Israeli SSNPOs. The sample reflected Israel's geographical, religious, ethnic, and job (full-time and part-time) diversity. Interviewees were asked about their employment experiences, struggles, and challenges. Thematic analysis was used. The findings shed light on how care work in SSNPOs enters the private sphere and is internalized, i.e. boundaries between home and work that are continuously blurred and endanger employees' well-being. Our study suggests that women working in care professions in contracted SSNPOs are more vulnerable due to their working conditions, despite their postsecondary education and defined professions. Negative psychosocial outcomes are the major challenge for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study re-examined Gresham Sykes's initial conceptualization of 'pains of imprisonment' as it applied to women inmates. It contextualized these pains within the women's social experiences both inside and outside the only women's prison in Israel. Semi-structured interviews with 42 female prisoners were conducted. Two counter-themes emerged from our analysis. The first one portrayed prison as punishment, a 'painful condition,' a stressful event that included deprivation, negative meaning, suffering, and pain. The opposite--and more dominant--theme framed incarceration as a positive experience, during which the prisoners, received nurturing, care, and treatment, which they had not been afforded in the outside world. We found that 'pains of imprisonment' was a multidimensional and complex phenomena that included contradicting emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. 'Pains of imprisonment' was part of a larger group of pains that extended beyond the time and place of prison. KEYWORDS women prisoners, pains of imprisonment, positive accounts of imprisonment DOI: 10.1080/03630242.2010.510388

Between 1948 and 1970, Israeli society witnessed a proliferation of discourses on juvenile delinquency, adopting a critical historically informed approach. This paper shows that debates on juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, as well as the inclusionary or exclusionary policies they promoted, were grounded within the project of nation building and interwoven in broader attempts to reshape the social and moral order of the new society. Reflecting an emerging conception of a 'normal insider' citizen, a norm against which all individuals were measured, the discourse on juvenile delinquency created a hierarchy of 'others.' Middle-class juvenile delinquents were seen, in spite of their criminal acts, as deserving members of the new community. Delinquency in Orientals was attributed to their lack of readiness to participate in the socio-cultural milieu, something to be treated by resocialization. Arab delinquents were considered aliens and received limited services and treatment. Discourse analysis techniques indicate that this structuring of delinquent groups by class, ethnicity and nationality was part of a broader definition of the ideal moral traits of the Israeli citizen.

This article analyses the formulation and implementation of a relatively new statutory programme of care services for dependent elderly people in Israel, which has as a basic characteristic the supply of services by nonstate agencies. The analysis serves as a basis for an exploration of the effects of privatisation and the emergence of quasi-markets upon the functioning of the welfare state both as a benefits provider and as a major employer. In contrast to the perspectives that consider privatisation as leading to the weakening of the state in the welfare domain, we argue that through the transfer of services supplied by non-state agencies the state protects itself from demands and pressures from clients, while maintaining its control and regulation capabilities. This process decreases the state's accountability towards its citizens, enhancing in turn its autonomy. Privatisation policies do not imply, therefore, the dissolution of the welfare state, but rather the emergence of a new mode of state intervention.

Recent decades have witnessed an increasing trend towards the development of critical approaches to the study of poverty, which call upon social workers to perceive people living in poverty as active agents who resist their condition. Relatively few studies, however, have examined how women living in poverty, who embody collective-political agency, experience the encounter with the welfare services, and how their manner of organisation is shaped by this encounter. This study examines this issue based on fifteen semi-structured interviews with mothers in need of public housing in Israel who are activists in protest groups against the public housing policy. The findings reveal that the encounter with welfare services generated feelings of othering due to the meanings attributed to their homelessness and to the nature of their mothering. Conversely, activism was perceived as a practice for challenging, redesigning and reducing power relations with the welfare agencies. The findings also show that the encounter shaped the participants' manners of activist mobilisation. The study contributes to the research literature on social work with women who live in poverty, by highlighting the important role of women's activism within the encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1988, Israel changed its rape laws, inflicting harsher penalties on convicted rapists. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, this study compared punishment meted out before and after the reform and content analyzed the judicial discourse created in the courts in both periods. The findings revealed little change in the severity of sentencing and in judges' attitudes toward rapists, victims, and the crime. The mechanism of normalization allowed judicial authorities to make concessions to rapists, reducing the severity of the offense, while continuing to ignore the plight of the victims.