Self-Esteem among Druze Women

Abstract

This review discusses the issue of self-esteem among Druze women in Israel in light of the challenges faced by the passage from traditional to modern society. It explores how gender roles, cultural dimensions, family structure, education and appearance influence women's self-esteem. Druze women are breaking the traditional boundaries, while at the same time protecting those boundaries and doing their best to ensure that Druze values are carried, by their community, into the future. They are supporting and enabling a different lifestyle and thus encouraging a change in the balance of power between genders; they are undermining the power and authority of the patriarchs themselves, while supporting an increase in women's self-esteem. Although Druze religious law gives women equal rights, the status of women in the Druze family is inferior to that of men. Nevertheless, today, one can see fathers who are encouraging their daughters to pursue higher education while overcoming criticism by the clergy and relatives. In the Israeli setting, Arabs and Druze belong to collectivistic societies and Jews to an individualistic society. Features of an individual's perceived self-esteem interact with ethnicity; together these play a major role in shaping behavior as well as self-esteem. Still, only a few studies have compared Druze and other cultures with respect to components of self-esteem. Gender-role identity is also positively related to self-esteem. Western culture, and today, also Arab culture relates to thinness as a determinant of good appearance and hence better self-esteem. Druze women's liberation in the last 10 years constitutes one of the Oriental culture's achievements. However, such an achievement is accompanied by a preoccupation with appearance, confidence and self-esteem. The growing interest in the relationship between cultural factors and self-esteem and body image, and the limited published empirical research on these components among Druze women, call for further investigation.