“The eye will always be underneath the eyebrow,” says an ancient Bedouin proverb. Aalia Abu Rabia from the Negev Bedouin village of Darijat interprets it to mean, “Women will always be inferior to men.”

Abu Rabia is one of the 24 strong and educated Bedouin women who are trying to change this opinion. She and her colleagues completed a six-month program last December that aims to provide women with both business management and public administration skills. The program is run by the Association of Community Centers and the Interior Ministry. More specifically, this course aims to train women to become members of executive boards in both the private and public sectors.

Abu Rabia, a master’s student in public administration, believes that courage is a necessary condition for women’s success. She has proven her courage when she went ahead with her divorce, despite the very conservative Bedouin society’s negative view of divorced women. “You need a lot of courage, but change is already here even though the men are at a stage of denial,” she said in a conversation with Al-Monitor. “Women can get involved and advance if they act carefully and not try to shatter tradition, taboos and values. If it doesn’t damage the structure of Bedouin society, anything is possible.”

The course was the initiative of the Department of Public Administration of the Association of Community Centers and the Interior Ministry as part of a government policy to empower women in the Bedouin sector. This goal of empowerment is reflected in the government’s five-year plan for the Bedouin sector, which was passed in February 2017. The plan makes a real investment in advancing education in the sector with the aim of reducing unemployment among the Bedouin, especially among women. Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Brookdale Institute show that the employment rate of Bedouin women is only about 24%, the lowest rate among all sectors in Israel.