Higher Education as a Platform for Cross‐Cultural Transition: the Case of the First Educated Bedouin Women in Israel

This article examines two groups of Bedouin women who studied in different cultural spaces. The first group, due to a lack of high schools in the Negev (during the 1970s), were obliged to leave the village to study and reside in boarding schools in the central and northern regions of Israel. These women returned to their society of origin after the completion of their academic studies. The second group went to Jewish universities in a town near their homes (Beersheba), attending daily and returning home each night to patriarchal control. The article examines the experience of these pioneers in higher education as a form of cultural transition and internal immigration, with an emphasis on the unique characteristics of each of the two groups. Going out to gain higher education is seen in Bedouin society as a form of immigration, and the first educated women therefore became a type of immigrant.