Gendering Forced Displacement: The Experience of Palestinian Women Refugees from a Feminist Standpoint

This paper explores the experience of Palestinian women refugees and examines how their forced displacement experience is gendered. It first discusses women’s experience in the pre displacement phase before Palestinian dispossession in 1948 and the establishment of Zionist state and reveals how gender-based violence was used by Israeli settler forces to abuse women’s bodies to facilitate the displacement of Palestinian population. Gender-based violence was prominent in the displacement of Palestinians by settler colonialism using forms of bodily colonization such as massacres and rape incidents. The paper then discusses the Palestinian women refugee experience in the post displacement phase in the refugee camps in the host Arab countries. It explores how the situation of Palestinian refugees in camps is gendered and has a significant influence on women’s experiences. It examines the way in which refugee women face different experiences in comparison to those of men. Poverty in Palestinian camp situations reinforced patriarchal structures, as women has less access to education and got married at early ages. The paper adopts a feminist perspective which emphasizes the fact that Palestinian women’s experiences and voices are marginalised in a male dominated history telling. Therefore, the feminist approach focusses on the experiences of women and the gendered violence and discrimination they faced. Women’s experiences from a gendered lens are important for understanding the broader context in terms of forced migration, political violence, and how that affects women refugees differently.