From research on girls to girlhood studies: Exploring Israeli girlhood studies from an international and historical perspective

Abstract

This review, based on analysis of the abstracts of 271 academic publications, critically examines the development of girlhood studies within a specific sociocultural context – Israeli society. By examining one particular context the authors hope to contribute to the discourse on the worldwide evolution of girlhood studies. The following research questions were posed: How did the body of literature on Israeli girls develop over time? What is the distribution of disciplines and topics represented? Who are the girls at the focus of the writing? What are the methodological and paradigmatic approaches adopted? The findings point to the tentative development of a girlhood studies perspective that began in the 1980s and expanded over time, revealing the spread and reclaiming of feminist theoretical tenets as embodied in the study of girls. The review both sheds light on the pace and the manner in which Western feminist ideas spread to a specific local arena, and identifies unique local influences impacting this process.

Keywords

Academic literature critical review gender studies girlhood studies girls

Introduction

Girls are, and have always been, the focus of writing in various disciplines, although not necessarily from a distinct gendered perspective. Following the groundbreaking contributions of the foremothers of studies on girls (Gilligan, 1982; McRobbie, 1991), feminist scholars across a range of diciplines have turned their attention to the unique experiences of girls. The past two decades have seen the rise of girlhood studies, a new critical feminist interdisciplinary field within women’s studies and gender studies (Kearney, 2009). This review critically examines the development of academic literature on girls and girlhood and the emergence of a girlhood studies perspective within a specific sociocultural context, that of Israeli society.

No similar reviews of academic literature on girls in other countries could be found. Nevertheless, analysis of academic literature on girls is important for feminist researchers not only because of the previous marginalization of girls within gender studies, but also because it offers an opportunity to examine the spread and reclamation of feminist theoretical tenets as embodied in the study of girls. Moreover, close examination of a particular geographical, political, and cultural context may shed light on the pace and the manner in which Western feminist ideas spread to specific local arenas.

The emergence of girlhood as a focus of feminist research

In the 19th and 20th centuries feminist thought and the feminist movement disregarded young women, pushing them to the margins (Kearney, 2009). Studies of girls within the emerging field of women’s studies in the 1970s focused mainly on their maturation into adult women. The growing interest in intersections of identities, encouraged by later post-structuralist epistemologies, as well as the establishment of Western gender studies and the increase in academic feminist research, all contributed to the emergence of the new field of girlhood studies (Kearney, 2009).

Girlhood studies rejects the definition of girlhood as a transitional stage preceding womanhood, focusing specifically on the experience of girls (Mazzarella and Pecora, 2007). Girlhood is perceived as a discursive and fluid social construction that enables girls, as individuals and as a collective, to engage in negotiations regarding their girlhood (Aapola et al., 2005; Kearney, 2009).

In addition, girlhood studies is opposed to the notion of ‘girl’ as a homogeneous, universal category, and criticizes the narrow focus on white, Western, middle-class girls. Rather, this approach emphasizes the intersection of identities and the need to analyze negotiations among the different types of identity, including gender, race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and age (Mazzarella, 2008; Mitchell et al., 2008).

Furthermore, girlhood studies is committed to a broad range of topics related to girlhood as lived and experienced in different contexts (Mitchell et al., 2008). Studies go beyond the more traditional focus on girls’ vulnerability, body pathology, and risk to explore issues related to daily practices, culture production, and activism (Harris and Fine, 2004), and tend to use critical, qualitative methods of inquiry that retain the embodied presence of girls as agents (Currie, 2008). Hence, for the purposes of this review we defined a girlhood studies perspective as one which adopts an interdisciplinary and critical approach, uses qualitative methodologies, focuses on girls from distinct sociocultural groups, and deals with topics that go beyond girls’ bodies, risk, and misbehavior.

The study of Israeli girls

The current study sought to trace evidence of a feminist girlhood studies’ perspective in Israeli academic literature on girls. Israeli society displays both traditional and modern attributes. Its population originates not only from the Middle East, but also from Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. In 2014, Israel had 8,296,900 inhabitants, about 75% of them Jews, 21% Israeli Palestinians, and around 4% identified as ‘others,’ mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union (Central Bureau of Statistics [CBS], 2015). Critical sociologists maintain that Israel is a deeply divided country and society (Smooha, 2002). Although to a certain extent the country is experiencing the process of individualization that typically accompanies the ‘post-modern family revolution’ in a democratic society, family continues to play a crucial role on both the individual and the collective level, with Israel recording the highest fertility rate among the OECD countries (Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2016). Moreover, despite the progress made by Israeli women in education, in practice Israel is a strongly gendered society in which women have yet to achieve equality in the workforce and the economy.

While there are no systematic or comprehensive data on Israeli girls, some basic statistics are available. In 2014, there were 311,000 girls aged 15–19 in the country, constituting 49% of the age group. Of these, 71% were Jewish and 29% Israeli Palestinians. Israel’s law of compulsory education requires all girls (and boys) to complete 12 years of schooling, with girls of all religions recording higher academic achievements than boys (CBS, 2015). At the age of 18, non-religious Jewish girls are required by law to enlist in the army and serve for two years, although only 42% of them actually do so (Moshe, 2013), with the rest receiving exemptions for a variety of reasons. Some religious girls also serve in the military and others perform national civil service.

Until recently, Israeli literature on local feminist research virtually ignored the study of girls as a distinct field of knowledge, as reflected in several collections of articles on women’s studies and gender studies in Israel (e.g., Fuchs, 2014; Shilo and Katz, 2011). An updated analytic review of the research on gender issues in the social sciences in Israel in the last two decades similarly ignores girls as a social group and as an area of research interest (Sasson-Levy and Misgav, 2017). Only a single study offered a feminist analysis of the literature on girls in distress published from 1970 to 2010 (Berkowitz-Romano et al., 2013) and the first book on Israeli girls, focusing on girls and their bodies, was only recently published (Lachover et al., 2017).

As Israeli feminist discourse is influenced by Western feminist discourse through the import and translation of ideas (Herzog, 2014), the development of girlhood studies in Israel may echo the situation in other countries. At the same time, examination of this evolution can identify the social and gendered characteristics in the local arena that impact Israeli research in particular. The current study joins ongoing efforts to examine gender research from an international perspective (e.g., Magaraggia and Leone, 2010; Purkayastha et al., 2003), as well as more recent examinations of local knowledge on girls from the international perspective of girlhood studies (Mitchell, 2012). For example, two special issues of the journal Girlhood Studies were dedicated to specific geographical-cultural settings: Nordic countries (Mitchell and Reid-Walsh, 2013) and post-Soviet society (Zdravomyslova and Iarskaia-Smirova, 2015). Like them, the present study aims to contribute to the developing body of global knowledge on girlhood research while also providing specificity to the term ‘girl,’ which, without explicit reference to space and place, tends to be grouped under the less-diversified term girl-culture (Rentschler and Mitchell, 2016).

Method

The current study is a critical and systematic scoping review that seeks to map studies on Israeli girls by examining the academic literature published in peer-reviewed journals and in books in the last seven decades, that is, since Israel became an autonomous state. The scoping review method suits examination of the extent, range, and nature of research activity, and allows for a rapid mapping of a broad research area (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005). We followed the five stages for conducting a scoping review as defined by Arksey and O’Malley (2005): (1) identifying a broad research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection and establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria; (4) charting the data and sorting the information; (5) collating, summarizing and reporting results.

Identifying the research question

The following research questions were formulated: How did the body of literature on Israeli girls develop over time? What is the distribution of disciplines and topics represented? On what girls does the writing focus? What are the methodological and paradigmatic approaches adopted?

Identifying relevant studies

In conducting a scoping review, a balance needs to be reached between breadth, comprehensiveness, and feasibility (Levac et al., 2010). The current review was therefore limited to the abstracts of academic literature about teenage girls in Israel, from all disciplines, published in peer-reviewed journals and academic reports and books from 1948 to 2014. Concentrating only on the abstracts enabled completion of a scoping study in a timely fashion.

A systematic search was conducted between June 2014 and September 2014 in the major multidisciplinary online academic databases, including: PsycNET, ProQuest, ERIC, Web of Science, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Cambridge Books Online, and HeinOnline. Articles in Hebrew were searched for in the Index to Hebrew Periodicals and the DaT, a unified search system of Israeli university libraries. A manual search was conducted in the tables of contents of leading Israeli pediatrics, gynecological, and family medicine journals not fully covered in online databases. A search in Arabic was conducted by a native Arabic speaking librarian, who is also a graduate of sociology and gender studies. The search included the library’s main catalogue and online academic databases in Arabic. In addition, reference lists of all traced articles were reviewed.

Search terms and their combinations included: ‘Israel(i),’ ‘teenage girls,’ ‘adolescent girls,’ ‘girlhood,’ ‘female,’ ‘adolescents,’ ‘female teens,’ ‘female youth,’ ‘young females,’ ‘minor female,’ and their Hebrew and Arabic equivalents. The search in Arabic also included the terms: ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Arab.’

Selection criteria

Inclusion criteria were defined and applied by an interdisciplinary research team conducting a transparent and replicable selection process (Levac et al., 2010). Only publications that specifically related to (a) teenage girls (b) in Israel (c) as a distinct study population (d) as apparent in their title or abstract were selected for review. Publications centering on a mixed population (in terms of gender or age) were included only when specific information was provided on adolescent girls as a focal group. The selection process resulted in a corpus of 271 publications.

Charting the data

In view of the research questions, the research team defined an initial list of variables to be extracted from the publications based on the information included in the title and abstract. The classification of publications by variables was performed by the second author in consultation with other team members. Following a pilot analysis of about 50 publications, the variables were revised to improve validity, reliability, and fit with the research questions (Levac et al., 2010). The final list of variables was as follows:

Decade: The date of publication was sorted into decades (starting with the 1950s). The proportional weight of items published in the years 2010–2014 was calculated by multiplying their number by 2.5.

Language: (1) Hebrew; (2) English; (3) Hebrew and English; (4) Arabic.

Paradigmatic approach: (1) Critical: seeks to uncover the social conditions under which knowledge is articulated and designed not only to comprehend, but also to transform, knowledge and the nature of the subject, e.g., post-modern, feminist, post-colonial, Marxist (Thompson, 2017); (2) Non-critical: based on theories not founded on social critique, e.g., post-positivist, psychopathological.

Publication type: (1) Journal article; (2) Book or Book chapter; (3) Report.

Discipline: (based on the description of the aim and scope of the book or the journal in which the article was published): (1) Social sciences, e.g., psychology, social work, criminology, sociology, education, art therapy, sports studies, youth studies; (2) Humanities, e.g., linguistics, history, Jewish studies, Middle Eastern studies, film studies; (3) Law; (4) Medicine, e.g., gynecology, psychiatry, general medicine, pediatrics, nutrition, adolescent medicine; (5) Interdisciplinary, e.g., gender studies, interdisciplinary studies, communications, culture studies.

Topic: Inductive content analysis of publication titles resulted in an initial list of 85 topics which was narrowed down to 11 topics. The list was then further grouped into four core topics: (1) Risk and sexuality; (2) Health; (3) Identity and relations; (4) Culture and society (see Figure 1).

Focus population: (1) General Israeli girl population, e.g., teenage girls, Jewish teenage girls, urban teenage girls; (2) Social minority, e.g., girls who immigrated to Israel, Arab teenage girls, Orthodox teenage girls; (3) Girls in distress, e.g., runaway girls, girls who abuse substances, girls who are clients of welfare or child protection services.

Genre: (1) Quantitative research, i.e., measurement and analysis of casual relationships between variables, not processes (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011); (2) Qualitative research, i.e., investigating how social experience is created and given meaning (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011); (3) Review or intervention-related.

Data analysis

In accordance with the descriptive aim of the study and the mostly ordinal or categorical nature of the variables, the analysis consisted of cross-tabulations and Pearson’s chi-square tests. The level of significance for all analyses was p < .05.

Results

Table 1 presents the distribution of the variables in the corpus, and shows that the majority of the 271 publications were journal articles, were in the social sciences, and focused on the general population of teenage Israeli girls. About half the publications were quantitative studies, close to a third were reviews or intervention-related, and the rest were qualitative studies.

Table 1.

Distribution of main research variables.

Variable	n	%	Variable	n	%
Publishing decade	n	%	Publication discipline	n	%
1950s	1	0.4	Social sciences	142	52.4
1960s	5	1.8	Medicine	84	31.0
1970s	18	6.6	Interdisciplinary	38	14.0
1980s	35	12.9	Humanities	5	1.9
1990s	46	17.0	Law	2	0.7
2000s	106	39.1
2010s	60	22.1	Main topic
			Risk and sexuality	93	34.3
Publication type			Health	88	32.5
Journal	228	84.1	Culture and society	55	20.3
Book (or chapter)	30	11.1	Identity and relations	35	12.9
Review	13	4.8
			Population in focus
Publication language			General teenage girl	144	53.2
Hebrew	147	54.3	Girls in distress	73	26.9
English	116	42.8	Social minorities	54	19.9
Both	6	2.2
Arabic	2	0.7	Publication genre
			Quantitative	140	52.0
Paradigmatic approach			Intervention-related or review	90	33.5
Critical	42	15.9	Qualitative	39	14.5
Not critical	222	84.1

Disciplines and topics

Differences were found between the disciplines in respect to the main topic of the writing (χ² (12, N = 271) = 216.20, p < .001). Understandably, most of the publications in the medical field were concerned with health issues (88.1%, n = 74). The rest dealt mainly with issues of risk and sexuality (10.7%, n = 9), and none concerned cultural issues. In the social sciences, 54.9% of the publications (n = 78) were about risk and sexuality, 21.1% (n = 30) about culture and society, 16.9% (n = 24) about identity and relations, and only 7% (n = 10) about health. In contrast, in interdisciplinary fields, culture and society were the focus of more than half (52.6%, n = 20) of the publications, while the rest of the themes ranged between 10.5% and 21.1%.

Historical trends

Trends over time are presented in Figure 2, which reveals an increase in the absolute number of publications about teenage girls over the decades. Moreover, up to the 1980s, most publications appeared in the context of the social sciences, mainly in the fields of social work and criminology (not presented). Since then, there has been a growing diversification in terms of discipline. The first publications on girls in the humanities appeared only in the 1990s, and in law, only just recently. The significant increase in the number of references to girls in the last two decades can be attributed mainly to publications in the social sciences and interdisciplinary studies, with a drop evidenced in the medical field.

In the 1950s and 1960s, very little was written about teenage girls. The increase in publications on the subject in the 1970s is attributed to a growing interest in girls in distress, who were the focus of 13 of the 18 publications that appeared in that decade (72.2%) and of 57.1% of the publications in the 1980s. Since the 1980s, there has been a gradual rise in writing about girls from social minorities, ranging from 14.3% to 24.5% of the publications in each decade.

Distribution of the main topics represented over the decades appears in Table 2. As can be seen from the table, the dominant topic in the 1970s and 1980s was risk and sexuality, while in the 1990s writing about health issues emerged as a major topic and has remained as such. Furthermore, the last two decades are characterized by a noticeable increase in writing about identity and relations and about culture and society.

Table 2.

Main topic by decade.

	Risk and sexuality	Health	Identity and relations	Society and culture	Total
	n (% in the decade)	n (% in the decade)	n (% in the decade)	n (% in the decade)	Total
1950s	0(0.0%)	0(0.0%)	0(0.0%)	1(100.0%)	1(100.0%)
1960s	1(20.0%)	1(20.0%)	0(0.0%)	3(60.0%)	5(100.0%)
1970s	15(83.2%)	1(5.6%)	1(5.6%)	1(5.6%)	18(100.0%)
1980s	23(65.7%)	5(14.3%)	3(8.6%)	4(11.4%)	35(100.0%)
1990s	12(26.1%)	22(47.8%)	5(10.9%)	7(15.2%)	46(100.0%)
2000s	28(26.4%)	42(39.6%)	13(12.3%)	23(21.7%)	106(100.0%)
2001–2014	14(23.3%)	17(28.3%)	13(21.7%)	16(26.7%)	60(100.0%)

Until the 1990s, the most common publication genre was reviews or intervention-related material, accounting for about 60% of the writing on Israeli girls in each decade. Since then, the proportion of publications based on quantitative research has increased, from 45.7% in the 1990s to 60.0% in the 2000s, with a slight decrease to 57.6% in the 2010s. Qualitative studies on Israeli girls were first published in the 1990s and have constituted about a fifth of the publications in each decade ever since. The 1990s also saw the first writings from a critical perspective, with most of such publications being qualitative studies (70.7%), 24.4% intervention-related, and only two quantitative studies.

The focus population

The distribution of the main target populations appears in Table 1. As can be seen from the table, 19.9% of the articles (n = 54) focus on girls from social minorities. Further analysis revealed that the main minority populations were religious and ultraorthodox Jewish girls (5.5%, n = 15), Palestinian Arab girls (5.5%, n = 15), girls of Ethiopian origin (2.2%, n = 6), and girls whose families immigrated from the former USSR (1.8%, n = 5). Significant differences were found between the disciplines in respect to the population on which the writing focused (χ² (8, N = 271) = 86.9, p < .001). The differences seem to stem from more interest in girls in distress in the social sciences (45.1%, n = 64) than in medicine (2.4%, n = 2), where most of the publications focused on the general girl population (89.3%, n = 75). Similarly, most of the writing about girls from sociocultural minorities was in the social sciences (61.1%, n = 33), while only seven publications in the field of medicine related specifically to this population.

The distribution of the focus populations also differed significantly among the four main topics (χ² (6, N = 271) = 153.6, p < .001), as shown in Figure 3. Publications about health focused mostly on the general girl population, while issues of risk and sexuality related mainly to girls in distress. The topics of identity and relations and culture and society were explored primarily in reference to the general girl population, but also among girls from sociocultural minorities, and to a lesser degree among girls in distress.

Genre and paradigmatic approach

Similar differences were found between the focus populations in regard to the genre of the writing (χ² (4, N = 269) = 52.65, p < .001). Most of the publications focusing on the general girl population were based on quantitative studies (67.8%, n = 97), a fifth were reviews or intervention-related (21.7%, n = 31), and the rest were qualitative studies (10.5%, n = 15). In contrast, most of the publications about girls in distress were reviews or intervention-related (63.0%, n = 46), and the rest were quantitative or qualitative studies (24.7%, n = 18, 12.3%, n = 9, respectively). A different trend emerged among girls from sociocultural minorities, with a greater number of qualitative studies focusing on this population (28.3%, n = 15).

There were also significant differences (χ² (2, N = 265) = 14.85, p = .001) between the three focus populations regarding the paradigmatic approach adopted. While a critical approach is apparent in about a third (30.8%) of the publications on girls from sociocultural minorities, it was found in only 19.2% of the publications about girls in distress and 8.6% of the publications on the general girl population.

Another significant difference in genre also emerged between the disciplines (χ² (8, N = 269) = 71.12, p < .001). While in medicine, three-quarters (74.7%, n = 62) of the publications were based on quantitative research and none was based on qualitative research, in the social sciences the number of quantitative studies and reviews or intervention-related writing was almost identical (n = 61 and n = 62 respectively), totaling 86.7% of the publications in this discipline. Moreover, in interdisciplinary fields, 50.0% (n = 19) of the publications were based on qualitative research and the rest were mainly quantitative studies (39.5%, n = 15).

A similar trend was found when analyzing the paradigmatic approach in the various disciplines (χ² (4, N = 265) = 46.84, p < .001). While in interdisciplinary fields almost half of the publications relied on a critical approach (42.1%, n = 16), the same was true for only 16.7% (n = 23) of the publications in the social sciences and for none of the medical publications. The adoption of a critical approach was most common in qualitative studies, and was evident in the majority of them (76.3%, n = 29). On the other hand, only 11.8% (n = 10) of reviews or intervention-related publications and 1.4% (n = 2) of quantitative publications evidenced a critical approach.

Language

Hebrew was initially the prominent language of publication, accounting for 70.6–100% of the publications in the first four decades. Since the 1990s, approximately two-thirds of the publications have been in English (63.2–69.0%). Publication in Arabic was very limited and only two publications from the 2010s were found.¹ Because of the small number, they were not included in language-stratified analyses.

The distribution of language by variables is shown in Table 3, revealing significant language differences in most of the charted variables. In contrast to publications in interdisciplinary fields and medicine, which were primarily in English, publications in the social sciences were mostly in Hebrew. As to the main topic of the publication, close to half of the publications in Hebrew focused on risk and sexuality, while close to half of the English publications were about health issues. Publications relating to culture and society and to identity and relations were divided almost equally between the two languages.

Table 3.

Language of publication by variables.^a

	Hebrew	English	χ²
	n (%)	n (%)	χ²
Discipline			65.74^***
Social sciences	88 (64.2)	49 (35.8)
Medicine	10 (11.9)	74 (88.1)
Interdisciplinary	12 (34.3)	23 (65.7)
Humanities	5 (100.0)	0 (0.0)
Law	1 (33.3)	2 (65.7)
Main topic			48.70^***
Risk and sexuality	61 (68.5)	28 (31.5)
Health	15 (17.0)	73 (83.0)
Culture and society	26 (50.0)	26 (50.0)
Identity and relations	14 (40.0)	21 (60.6)
Target population			61.01^***
General teenage girl	38 (26.6)	105 (73.4)
Girls in distress	58 (82.9)	12 (17.1)
Social minorities	20 (39.2)	31 (60.8)
Publication type			48.35^***
Quantitative	37 (26.4)	103 (73.6)
Intervention-related or review	64 (73.6)	23 (26.4)
Qualitative	15 (42.9)	20 (57.1)
Approach			0.99
Critical	91 (41.4)	129 (58.6)
Not critical	19 (50.0)	19 (50.0)

Not including two publication in Arabic because of the small number.

Language differences emerged in regard to the focus population as well. Publications about teenage girls in general and about girls from sociocultural minorities tended to be written in English, while those about girls in distress were written mostly in Hebrew. Lastly, genre was also related to language. Most quantitative studies were in English, while most reviews or intervention-related publications were in Hebrew.

Discussion

This study sought to trace the development of girlhood studies in the academic literature on Israeli girls. The findings point to the preliminary and tentative emergence of a girlhood studies perspective that began in the 1980s and has expanded over time. Hence, the discussion below focuses on the significance of the findings in light of global trends and within the local Israeli context, including developments in gender studies, consumer culture, and professional interventions for girls, and concludes with implications for future research.

Israeli girlhood studies

As noted above, a girlhood studies perspective is characterized by an interdisciplinary and critical approach, qualitative methodologies, and focus on girls from distinct sociocultural groups and on topics beyond the traditional issues of girls’ bodies, risk, and misbehavior. Each of these aspects was assessed in the current review, as well as the aspect of language of publication.

Interdisciplinary research

Although the vast majority of the literature on girls in Israel is medical and focuses on health, an increase in disciplinary diversification can be seen starting in the 1980s. This is particularly apparent in the significant rise in the number of publications in the social sciences, which is in keeping with the development of girlhood studies worldwide (Kearney, 2009). Furthermore, the crossing of disciplinary boundaries and the interplay of various disciplines to generate a comprehensive and richer understanding of the lives of girls (Kearney, 2009; Kirk et al., 2010) are reflected in an increase over the decades in literature published in interdisciplinary journals.

Critical perspective and qualitative methodology

The number of publications on girls in Israel that adopt a critical perspective and employ qualitative methodology is still relatively small. Nevertheless, the significant growth in critical qualitative research in this domain beginning in the 1990s, particularly in the realm of interdisciplinary studies, may point to the inception of girlhood studies as a field of scholarship in Israel.

Focus on girls from distinct sociocultural groups

Most of the publications about Israeli girls do not focus on the uniqueness of their sociocultural origins, thus obscuring the diversity in girls’ experiences and life circumstances, the conditions which generate such diversity, and the intersections between different identities. This is especially true of Israeli girls who do not belong to the hegemonic Jewish secular sector. However, while only around one-fifth of all the publications reviewed refer to girls’ sociocultural features, this trend has been on the rise in recent decades.

Overall, the small number of publications focusing on girls from distinct sociocultural groups could be explained by the continuing exclusion of minorities, both women and men, from Israeli academia, most notable in their low representation in the higher education system (Hertz-Lazarowitz and Oplatka, 2009). For example, in the 2012–2013 academic year, Israeli Palestinians constituted only 1.75% of the faculty (lecturers with tenure) of Israeli universities. This exclusion not only perpetuates inequality and prevents social mobility and political struggle (Ali, 2013), but also limits the potential diversity in Israeli scholarship. Specifically, publications on Palestinian girls in Israel constitute only 6%, while they constitute a fifth of the population. This reflects the marginalization of the Israeli Palestinian population in the Israeli public sphere. It should be borne in mind that the status of the Israeli Palestinian minority is entirely different from that of minority groups in Western countries. Although they are citizens of the country, they are also part of the Palestinian nation, which is involved in an ongoing conflict with Israel.

Similarly, the absence from this literature of girls from Mizrahi communities (originating in North Africa and the Middle East) stands out in light of their significant share in the Israeli Jewish population (28.8% in 1995, 24.6% in 2008; Cohen, 2014). Indeed, Mizrahi feminist researchers have pointed to the historical exclusion of Mizrahi feminism from the Israeli feminist discourse, claiming that the alternative discourse it proposes has had only a limited impact on the Israeli academic agenda (Motzafi-Haller, 2011).

Furthermore, LBT girls in Israel are completely missing from the literature reviewed. This may reflect the exclusion of lesbians from the Israeli cultural arena, resulting in a relative paucity of research on lesbians as compared with homosexual males (Kama, 2014).

Interestingly, the analysis revealed a sizable body of literature on ‘girls in distress.’ For the most part, this term reflects a professional and institutional definition used mainly in the context of Israeli welfare services, and as such does not necessarily indicate the girls’ self-definition. Hence, it cannot be assumed that these publications are all concerned with the unique experience and life conditions of girls in this group. Indeed, some of them appear to adopt a judgmental, supervisory, or pathological approach to these girls (Berkowitz-Romano et al., 2013). This coincides with the finding that publications on girls in distress tend to focus on the topic of risk and sexuality and to be intervention-related, rather than based on a critical perspective.

Research topics

In line with the traditional emphasis of research on girls on aspects of distress, danger, and threat (Duits and van Zoonen, 2009), the primary research topic in the literature on girls in Israel is risk and sexuality. However, there has been a recent trend toward a diversification of topics, with more publications relating to identity and relationships and to culture and society. This echoes the perspective of girlhood studies, which, as noted, calls for expanding the research to girls acting as agents in diverse life situations (Rentschler and Mitchell, 2014).

Language of publication

Over the years, the language of the literature on girls in Israel has shifted from predominantly Hebrew to largely English. This change may reflect, first and foremost, the growing demand from Israeli academics to publish in international venues. However, doing so requires the adoption of a global perspective and jargon, which may discourage local professionals working with girls from publishing in international journals. Furthermore, that most of the publications in Hebrew focus on the topic of risk and sexuality, and many are related to intervention, also suggests a perception of this domain as belonging to the context of local welfare policy and intervention practice (Berkowitz-Romano et al., 2013).

The language of publication has not previously been employed as a dimension of analysis in girlhood studies, perhaps because of the hegemonic status of English. In global terms, the dominance of English can be considered an aspect of Anglo-American influences (Tsuda, 2014). Our findings suggest that these influences also shape the literature on girls in Israel via their impact on the local academic world. However, writing in English in a society that is not English speaking conflicts with one of the goals of girlhood studies, namely to construct knowledge about girls without excluding the girls themselves from the process (Kearney, 2009) and expands the power gap between the producers of academic knowledge and both the professionals that work with girls and the girls themselves.

Furthermore, even though Arabic is Israel’s second official language (after Hebrew) and has always been the language of the largest national minority, almost no publications on girls in Israel were found in Arabic. This is not surprising in view of the dearth of Palestinian scholars in Israeli universities noted above, the ongoing erosion of the status of the Arabic language in Israel in general and in academia in particular, and political efforts to establish Hebrew as the exclusive official language of Israel (Abu Ras and Maayan, 2014). Elana Shohamy and Marwan Abu Ghazaleh-Mahajneh (2012) term the attempt to usurp the place of the Arabic language in Israel a ‘linguistic conquest.’ Everyday life in the country and its educational system demand that the Arab population be bilingual in Arabic and Hebrew, whereas Hebrew–English bilingualism is expected of the Jewish population, even though English is not an official language in Israel. According to Maisalon Dallashi,² Arab scholars in Israel have internalized the notion that Hebrew, and even more so English, are languages with professional symbolic capital, and have therefore adopted these languages for their academic writing. Moreover, some of these scholars are of the opinion that scientific writing in Arabic is viewed as an ideological or radical political statement that is liable to impact negatively on them, and therefore avoid writing and publishing in Arabic. This situation is further reinforced by the fact that there are no Arab research universities in Israel (Ali, 2013).

The Israeli context

The current study found signs of an emerging girlhood studies perspective in the academic literature on Israeli girls in the last two decades. This development mirrors the expansion of Israeli gender studies during the same years (Herzog, 2014; Shilo and Katz, 2011). Moreover, Israeli feminist scholarship is influenced by, and part and parcel of, the global feminist discourse which has become progressively more post-modern, intersectional, and immersed in the politics of identity theories (Fuchs, 2014; Herzog, 2014).

During the 1980s, the criterion of gender equality emerged as an analytic lens in Israeli gender studies, which referred to ‘Israeli women’ as one general social category (Herzog, 2014). Since the 1990s, under the influence of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, the category ‘Israeli women’ has been deconstructed. Israeli feminist studies has increasingly challenged hegemonic feminism by accentuating the multiple components of identity, such as class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or nationality, and demanding that more attention be paid to diversity (Yanay, 2007). Highlighting the discourse of difference also turned a critical gaze on Israeli feminist scholarship itself, which was condemned for silencing and marginalizing Mizrahi, Palestinian, and lesbian women (Fuchs, 2014). Moreover, the critical discussion of the privileged status of those who conduct feminist social research led to the creation of new feminist Mizrahi and Arab–Palestinian research agendas (Herzog, 2014). Based on our results, it can be said that deconstruction of the category of ‘Israeli women’ has now also begun to include the aspect of age, distinguishing not only between different groups of women, but also between women and girls. Thus, it might be argued that the introduction of a girlhood studies perspective is part of the revitalization of Israeli feminist scholarship.

Another possible explanation for the recent emergence of girlhood studies in Israel relates to the rapid process of economic and cultural globalization and the flourishing of late capitalism and the consumer culture in the country since the 1990s (Ram, 2008). Consuming girlhood, especially among adolescence girls, is a major discursive theme in girlhood studies, especially in the ‘first world’ (Kirk et al., 2010). Indeed, research suggests that Jewish Israeli girls are influenced by such global processes as neoliberal economics through the global flow of television programming, music, movies, books, digital devices, and the like (Reznik and Lemish, 2011).

Another dimension of the context within which Israeli girlhood studies is developing is professional welfare intervention. As shown, writing on girls in distress is prominent in the corpus of academic literature on girls in Israel, and much of it is comprised of intervention-related publications. This is suggestive of the interconnections between academic writing and professional practice with girls who are clients of welfare services. Some of the trends evident in the findings can be explained by developments in welfare interventions for girls throughout Israel’s history. Since its inception, a conservative orientalist gendered intervention approach for ‘problematic’ girls was practiced in Israel. This attitude focused on what was considered inappropriate sexual behavior, mostly by Jewish girls of Mizrahi origin, with a particular emphasis on their relations with Arab men. In parallel, the writing about interventions for girls in distress in Israel was largely characterized by a discourse of pathology and social control (Berkowitz-Romano et al., 2013). However, as Adva Berkowitz-Romano and her colleagues note in their review, in the past decade complex feminist discourses have begun to permeate the literature on girls in distress in Israel, at times avoiding this terminology and conceptualization altogether. It is reasonable to assume that this goes hand in hand with a change in the attitude of welfare professionals, and may explain the continuing decrease in the proportion of publications on girls in distress and diversification of the topics regarding this population beyond those of risk and sexuality.

Conclusion

To conclude, in response to Kearney’s (2009) call to analyze the evolution of girlhood studies within national contexts, this critical review is the first step in tracking the emergence of this discipline in Israeli academic literature. We believe that charting the early development of the new discipline in and of itself can contribute to the establishment of a girlhood studies community in Israel. Furthermore, it is our hope that our research will inspire a new avenue of scholarly investigation worldwide. Further analysis of girlhood studies literature in particular cultures, especially in non-English speaking and non-Western countries, can potentially reveal the reciprocal relations between local and global knowledge. Such localized investigations can also provide more comprehensive answers to questions such as: How do girlhood studies expand from what is considered ‘center’ to ‘periphery’ and from ‘periphery’ to ‘center’ in terms of time, disciplines and topics, focus population, genre and paradigmatic approach, language, and so on? What are the conditions for the development of a discipline of girlhood studies in a specific country? Which aspects of local girlhood studies are influenced by global factors and which are influenced by local factors? Similar studies in other countries will not only help further understanding of the role of the local context, but also allow for a comparative global analysis of the evolution of girlhood studies as a distinct field within gender studies. Such investigations might benefit from exploring the migration of Western ideas to other countries and cultures, and their translation into local academic discourse.

In addition, observing the development of the critical perspective offered by girlhood studies in a particular culture can shed light not only on the unique nature of girlhood studies itself, but also on the distinction between this field and gender studies. In this context, we suggest further theoretical consideration of the subject of whether girlhood studies contributes innovative thinking to gender studies, or merely integrates familiar principles of that discipline.

For pragmatic reasons, our scoping analysis of a large and varied corpus of publications was based mainly on information contained in the abstracts. Future studies may gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of this corpus, particularly regarding theoretical and paradigmatic approaches, by analyzing the complete texts and including additional sources, such as Master’s and Doctoral theses. A fuller picture of the emergence of girlhood studies in the local arena could also be obtained by examining other academic activities as well, such as presentations at academic conferences and university courses.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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