It's really great pleasure for me to introduce our speaker today, Professor Esther Head,
who is a professor of social anthropology at Zeph at Academic College in Israel.
She has spent the past 30 years researching teaching and also being an activist on feminism and social struggles.
Her work focuses on bureaucracy and gender with the context of immigration, politics, welfare, education, development projects and the Holocaust.
She visited the web. Her website will show you the extent of her work and publication show.
I will not go into that, but she has. She's the author of numerous books and articles, and there's her talk.
Today is based on one of her books, which has come out recently, which is called Stage Violence towards mothers and children.
The topic of the title of her talk is threatened motherhood in the Israeli welfare state,
the discourse and the practise behind the disqualification of disadvantaged women motherhood.
Another of good books, good books, like all our other books, is the daughter of immigrants and bureaucrats Ethiopians in an Israeli absorption centre.
And she's a co-editor of Israel Local Anthropology and Many, many more.
So it's there. I'm going to stop here and ask you to do to give us the benefit of your tool, right?
So over to you. Thank you. OK, thank you so much, Soraya.
I'm really grateful. So thank you for inviting me to give a talk on this distinguished platform of the women's rights in the Middle East seminars.
And I'm honoured to be hosted by the Middle East Centre in Oxford.
And my thanks go also to me, Stacy Churchill, for her valuable assistance in organising this event and for the wonderful poster.
My academic home. It's the first Academy College in April.
The book's publication, the one that I'm my talk is based on, and I'm grateful for that.
So in my talk, I shall elaborate on the role of state authorities,
especially the welfare system and the courts, in undermining disadvantaged women's motherhood.
I should also describe a few cases as time will allow, illustrating the devastating outcomes of this confrontation for both mothers and children
and the hopeless struggle of mothers to prevent the disqualification of their mother would.
My study emerges from 30 years of involvement in single mothers struggles against the expropriation of the custody of the offspring.
Many insights were also gained from critical reading or feminist studies on motherhood and poverty.
I came to realise that although motherhood is widely cherished, its value in practise is connected to state policies in various interests.
Hence, I shall examine the gap between the highly esteemed value bestowed on motherhood and salary vis-a-vis its work.
In reality, with my participation in mother struggles against the expropriation of the motherhood started in the beginning of the 90s.
It happened when I met killing young newcomer from South Africa.
Killen was referred to me by a journalist who wrote about the problematic attitude of the social workers
toward her complaint about her divorces suspected sexual conduct toward the two year old daughter.
After our meeting, I became profoundly involved in Karen's case.
For a long time and told me that the social workers blamed her and her daughter
for imagining things and suggested that she should have psychiatric tests.
Soon after the article was published, the social workers claimed that Gunn is an unfit mother in an abusive mother.
They recommended to the court to provide protection for the child, who is allegedly maybe at risk.
The youth investigate investigator's evaluation determined that the child could have been sexually molested in the site.
The psychiatrist suggested that the father is capable of losing the sense of what is forbidden.
Nevertheless, the judge's verdict was to remove the girl from her mother's custody to the father's custody.
Based on the social workers recommendations, the mother suffers from the symbiosis syndrome.
The judge ruled that the mother harms the girl, perceiving her as part of her entity.
Quoting this psychiatrist opinion, he couldn't.
He concluded the Killen is unaware of her difficulties was the father and his spouse a well,
excuse me, and therefore they are capable of dealing with them.
Our efforts to get to get help from senior officers in the Ministry for children's
rights organisations from Parliament members and even from the town's mayor failed.
The little girl was removed to her father's home later on when my involvement with many other cases expanded.
I came to realise the Kerins and her daughter's affair represented a broad reality beyond this specific case.
The social workers and the judge's attitude was found to be part of a general victim.
Declining to examine thoroughly unjust and evil decisions and practises.
Unable or unwilling to take steps to do justice with mothers and children.
Adhering to state authorities expectations and to power sent those interests.
I learnt that Karen's case is not exceptional, but it rather represents a bureaucratically structured phenomenon.
It entails consistent behavioural patterns of officials who are committed to the employing organisation from which they obtained the living,
engaged social and professional benefits. State authorities undermine mothers custodial rights over the children,
especially through the discourse about child child's well-being and parental incompetence.
Blaming mothers for physically endangering and neglecting their children.
While the formal discourse emphasises the value of biological motherhood in practise,
underprivileged mothers custody over the offspring can be easily undermined.
Single parent mothers are a susceptible group for which babies can be taken away to adopt.
Adoption in the children can be taken away to foster families or to welfare institutions.
Although motherhood is repeatedly praised in court hearings and in general, public discourse.
Yet in practise, it is often placed below the well-being and lives of women's children.
It follows that considering the good of the child is so superseding,
that would the mother inadvertently implies receiving the mother is an object and a function for the other, in Bulga Hooker's words.
However, quite often when the social and legal authorities intervene in their lives, neither the mother nor the child's rights seem to prevail.
The mother child conflict in the Israeli welfare state is widely revealed in practises of adoption and out-of-home
placement of children and youth involving the expropriation of parenthood when a when they grant thornton is involved.
According to Shimoni and Benveniste, single parent mothers are most of the most susceptible population with regard to
outperform placement of babies and children who are being taken away to adoption,
foster families or to welfare institutions. This one for policy is justified by claims about physical abuse and dangerous neglect of minors.
I suggest that the expropriation of disadvantaged single mothers for parenthood serves the interests economic, organisational and professional.
Thus, they argue that women's fertility is exploited by powerful groups to gain custody over their offspring.
The expropriation of custody over babies and children from disadvantaged mothers is also perceived as means of
silencing mothers claims conveying a threatening message to other women who demand economic assistance from the state.
Some feminist studies stress the connexion between globalisation,
neo-Liberal policies and women's poverty, in particular of those heading single parent families.
However, these studies ignore the connexion between women's weakness and the hidden threat of losing custody over the treatment.
My research and social activity unveiled this hardly spoken phenomenon.
Stigmatising and disqualifying disempowered women's motherhood occurs by blaming these women as
failing mothers and by blurring society's responsibility for their and the children's situation.
Andrea Wylie and Mary Pool to argue in a similar vein that blaming the sick and stigmatising
women is bad mothers is a familiar response to many social problems in the last decades.
Those growing feminist research relating to the profound role of motherhood in the feminine identity.
Afro-American scholars criticised the white feminists for ignoring the immense importance of motherhood for women.
According to Riley and Porter, this week's thought the feminist attitude to motherhood emerges from perceiving motherhood as a
major source of women's oppression and is causing the vulnerability and limitation in Israel to.
There's a growing tendency to connect motherhood and the feminine identity.
Similar studies focus on full mother's hardships. However, almost none deal with a potential threat over these women's motherhood.
The caring for the child discourse on the one hand and the bed mother discourse on the other
ensure the widely accepted public legitimacy for taking away children school from their families.
The gap between the rhetoric above the right of motherhood and the practises that
undermine it can be explained as serving the interests of the welfare institutions lobby,
which depends on the out of home placement welfare policy.
If you go the issue by several prominent judges we serve can serve to illustrate how decisions expropriate
and women's motherhood are based on rhetoric about biological motherhood versus children's welfare.
So Judge Beam has.
Chief Monk, for instance, admitted that the verdict he examines raised the concern that taking away babies for adoption is a problematic practise.
He implied that there is an inconsistency between the rhetoric opposing adoption of disadvantaged parents,
offspring by better off couples and actual decisions in specific cases, he wrote.
In his walk as follows,
it appears to me that all agree that the adoption law is not a tool for biggest redistribution of children's population in the country.
We are not ready. The children will be taken away from the parents custody just because the economic or spiritual situation is unfair.
Similar statements were expressed in other various buildings by High Court judges.
In one case, Judge Joshua Bell from the original court rejected the social workers recommendation to
transfer a girl to an adoptive family based on psychologist's observation that the mother is,
quote, retarded and primitive.
In his verdict, you rule the adoption law was not designed to enable a redistribution of children and the transfer from one family to another family.
Just because even the new family, the parents level is much higher or because in another family conditions of
bringing up children in the atmosphere are better in the biological family.
Thus, just be a bit of statement criticises the rapist for distribution of babies, according to parents socio economic status.
It seems, therefore, that the judge's reproach of the social workers emphasising that the state cannot be an agency that transfers babies from
poor parents to better off parents demonstrates his understanding that this is what the authorities do in practise.
A similar judicial criticism of the social workers was expressed by the former High Court judge a lack of culture.
School I expressed her reservations with regard to the prolonged legal discussions in the bay what was called baby of Scrive case.
She criticised sharply the windfall theory authorities for the deep and I quote blow to the natural
justice principle for no fault of the mother and of court and for abusing the parent's weakness.
Giving up the child in quote school bussing crisis forgot to blamed the social work, especially to get in haste.
Parents acceptance to the adoption, capturing parents in providing acceptance to the adoption.
Abusing mothers weakness to get control over the children seems to be embedded in the social power order and the part of social political bargains.
This veiled implication behind the expropriation of women's custody over the
babies and children gained only negligible attention in the feminist research.
Gorman novel, for instance,
should suggests that the Social Workers Act is a whip against single parent mothers and that they do not feel empathy to the mother situation.
Yet, she ignores the connexion between women's poverty and the disqualification of motherhood.
It is argued, then, the legal and wilful practise practises enable the expropriation of disadvantaged
women's motherhood using the children as a resource for social transaction.
This argument will be illustrated by the drug rehabilitation syndrome that refers to pregnant and boosting drug addicted women.
However, in cannabis work on mother foetus relationships and the use of drugs by pregnant women describe the
legal development that created the independent status of the minor in unborn baby in this case.
Apart from the mother status and rights. In fact, the separate status of the unborn baby from that of the mother enables those
in authority to abolish the mother's rights rights with regard to the foetus,
justifying this by claiming that the mother may harm the baby.
This position serves the welfare authorities in on both equal stimulating what was called pregnancy police,
which will intervene in any decision that the woman makes during her pregnancy, claiming that it can influence negatively the fate of harbouring.
Cadabby argues that the draconian step that's how she will seek the steps she says
are employed against pregnant women who are in a medically and need for position.
Society found here, she writes. The chance to impose supervision.
The feminine birthing functions, which are anyway very susceptible to its control.
Nevertheless, I suggest that this is the opportunity to take away unborn babies from women in a vulnerable situation that is behind the pregnancy.
Police, rather than intentional, practise this practise of undermining women's right both rights or punishing drug addicted women.
Hence, it is not surprising that about 50 percent of the babies that are born with a drug rehabilitation syndrome were taken away to adoption.
May suggest that taking away babies for adoption takes place from underprivileged
mothers and not only from mothers who are suspected of harming the foetus.
This policy stimulates the widely accepted belief that those mothers babies should be taken away for the baby's sake.
It appears, therefore, that the state intervention in individuals and families lives and the use of coercive coercive means
are directed toward marked groups with so-called social deviants or absence of parental competence.
A widely accepted human pressures that lobbyists and better off childless people exert on politicians seem to lie behind the rhetoric.
The legislation and the coercive means. The discourse that perceives the good of the child ascending above biological motherhood has
been revealed in various strategies relating to adoption brought to the Israeli courts.
This advantage lover's vulnerability, which makes it easier to take away the babies,
was exposed in several cases that became known as the baby strife.
There were three cases famous cases one 2004, the other in 2013 and the other one in 2017.
Those cases can demonstrate how the adoption practises undermine the biological role of motherhood, especially that of disadvantaged mothers.
In several cases, birth mothers who suffered from postpartum depression gave up the babies for adoption,
but regretted the decision a short time later. The most famous affair took place in 2004 and 2005.
I was exposed to that fear following a meeting with the birth mother and her spouse.
While our pain was discussed at the High Court in that case,
the mother confirmed her consent to giving up the baby because of economic and emotional difficulties.
She regretted her decision after a short time, according to the law.
At the time, a birth mother could relinquished her consent to give away her baby within three months
and her babies would be returned to her after a long legal struggle in the courts.
The High Court's verdict determined that the baby should be left with the adoptive adoptive parents.
According to the social workers recommendations, the verdict was saturated with rhetoric about the value of the family.
The voice of blood and the voice of nature.
Side by side with claims about the good of the child, although the latter concept is vague and ambiguous, is revealed by some scholars.
The judges decided seem to prefer the adoptive parents choose.
A law scholar argued that this verdict illustrates how High Court judges are
influenced by the world views and tend to ascribe heavy weight to experts opinions.
Ben David, another scholar from social work, also pointed to the problematic use of definitions of current parenthood,
competence and the good of the child in forced adoption processes.
The legal discourse, she argued, brings in the voice of the professional expert What is the biological parents?
Voice is not heard. The verdict in the above mentioned case demonstrate the fake biological motherhood of underprivileged
mothers is subject to powerful social bargaining and is controlled by state authorities state authorities.
In this reality, it is possible to carry out unofficially into class trade in babies.
Judge Ella BrokerCheck implied this understanding, calling the calling to cancel the adoption.
She exposed the bias we.
The hearings closed, for instance, by the prolonged trial which benefited the doping company who had kept the baby with them through that time.
Contrary to pro culture judge on one Bach, the president of the High Court at the time,
and the other five judges decided not to cancel the adoption process.
The explanations reality the mother's emotional distress after giving birth and ignored the fact that she
was psychologically pressured by social workers to sign her consent to offering her baby for adoption.
They also ignored the recommendations of the mother's advocate, the baby's guardian and the psychologist, none of which fitted the position.
The judges adopted the hypothetical assessment of endangering the minor if it were to be returned to his biological mother.
Disqualifying the supremacy of biological mother would block use the term optimal parental competence to justify the High Court's decision.
Thus,
the discourse on the good of the child served to whitewash the cruel implications for the biological mother and for biological motherhood at large.
It appears, therefore, the judge's verdicts explores a striking contradiction between the rhetoric and the actual decisions.
Institute specific cases The formal rhetoric criticised decisively taking away children of poor,
disadvantaged parents for adoption, perceiving it as an act of this redistribution connected to the class structure,
justice and social workers who come from realistic, relatively better off groups seem to prefer those who are closer to the social status.
Relying conveniently on social workers recommendations, the judges transfer babies of mothers in stressful situations to better off
parents endorsing the supremacy of optimal parenthood over biological attachment.
It is argued the thought that the courts and the welfare system serve the interests of better off groups,
facilitating the exploitation of the bursting of ability of disadvantaged women as a resource for fun for fulfilling the demand for babies.
If more affluent women, I shall describe now one case in which I was profoundly influenced accompanying a mother who struggles to prevent,
prevent the welfare authorities and the courts from taking away her 11 year old son.
This case illustrates the unbearable outcomes for disadvantaged single parent mothers in confronting powerful state agencies.
The professional discourse plays a prominent role in such cases.
The conspicuous stance used in this discourse against parental incompetence and the good of the child.
Both are perceived by the social and legal authorities as potentially incompetent.
Some 24 years ago, Edun was taken away from Batya and impoverished blind single parent,
and he was transferred over a period of one year and a half to state controlled institutions.
I was exposed to this case when Maja called me following a radio interview in which
I talked about the disturbing conditions in welfare institutions for youth at risk.
My involvement in this offer included daily telephone conversations with visits at home,
participating in court hearings and taking with talking with journalist Knesset members,
lawyers, police officers, professionals in children's rights organisations and others.
I witnessed Matyas incidents, intolerable experiences caused by various local and state officials and in court hearings.
This are first thought that started following,
but just a demand that her son be removed to another class because of the clash between her and his class teacher.
Her request was dismissed by the school director and the head of the local and occasional department.
He then stayed at home for a whole year while Batya tried to find another school for his son.
Is these efforts were blocked by the head of the Education Department Budget carried on her fight by turning
to the local and national media to the State Controller Organisation for Children's Welfare and Human Rights.
Knesset members and to officials in the Ministry of Education. These ActionScript angrily responded by the local Department of Education Welfare,
but there was one that the son would be taken away from her if she did not stop the
public accusations is that you continued her confrontation with the authorities.
The social workers in the scene, the local welfare department, recommended expropriating for custody of Edun.
The main claim was that she was suffocating her son depending on him and disturbing his development.
The courts accepted the social workers recommendation, as they do in most similar cases.
The order to abolish custody and to remove the ban against his and his mother switched to an emergency shelter.
Edun stayed there for 11 months. He ran away a few times and was called by the policeman who returned him to the shelter.
Then Ivana was transferred to a welfare who was still in Jerusalem, far from his mother's home.
He stayed there for another seven months. Following my suggestion to serve as a foster family for Edun, which was approved by the court.
Edun was transferred to my role. He told us about his tough experiences in the shelter and in the hospital,
and about the coercive means used to control and to punish the inmates amongst which were cold showers and then forced isolation.
But to complain the few times about the as violent behaviour and was repeatedly told by police officials that everything was OK when he then was 16,
but to die the way of breast cancer, he left. He left us and left us and returned to his mother's home.
Edun has never succeeded to recuperate, and he was repeatedly involved in illegal activities dealing with the police and the courts.
From a gifted child, he became a homeless person and often involved in criminal circles.
This example demonstrates the oppressive power that state authorities hold and employ,
especially when it comes to individuals who lack socio economic resources.
My understanding is, therefore, as stated earlier,
the disadvantage women like Batya can be conveniently stigmatised by the welfare and legal state system is unfit mothers.
This case also reveals how the welfare and educational departments serve as a as the long arm of the local municipality.
Silencing and punishing mothers who are troublemakers by expropriating the custody of the children.
Expropriating custody of the children serves to convey a warning or threat to single parent mothers against disturbing though authorities by,
for instance, demanding housing or subsistence assistance and becoming a burden on the state treasurer in mature but and in case the public
attention gains with the media coverage of the story irritated the officials and incited the desire to teach materialism,
taking away an only child who would signal to other mothers in a similar situation to be careful when turning to the authorities.
Thus, mothers can be controlled by threatening the mother.
In general, judges appear to assume in good faith or under constraint.
The social workers are driven by sincere concern of children's well-being and carrying out invaluable work.
Although abuse of children seem to occur often in welfare institutions,
judges seem to believe that they are better than a home in which the mother is allegedly unable to protect her child.
Judge judges routinely rely on them own on diagnosing agencies that cooperate with their welfare authorities.
Thus, both the good of the child and the right of motherhood are not guaranteed in the welfare state.
It seems that the child will be in the child.
Mother bonding can be joke or dies by state authorities, especially when it comes to disadvantaged mothers.
So to conclude, elaborating on the mother child conflict revealed that the social value attached to the concept of the good of the child serves as
a smokescreen in bowls and ghitis words to conceal the instrumental use of motherhood for realising social political interests.
Discussing the context of the Australia welfare policy at present concerning babies and children,
the three may highlight the fragile status of motherhood is influenced by women's socio economic situation disadvantage.
Mothers custody can be easily terminated by using the terminology of caring.
Four minus one being the sitting, he is proceeding the mother's right to motherhood.
I try to unveil the destructive outcomes of the unrestricted power of state agencies and other powerful organisations over wars, children and mothers.
Hence, I conclude that underprivileged women's, biological and sociological natures exploited by more affluent people, the state and various agencies.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Just really fascinating paper.
I really appreciate hearing about this because we know that Israel is a pro naturists country.
In fact, when it comes to infertility treatment, Israel has got the highest rate number of free IVF cycle in the world.
So when you think you know, in a country like that, everything has to be encouraged to what's motherhood?
And everything you're telling us is the discrimination which exists there.
And I imagine we can discuss it later about, is it a particular social group of women who are being actually targeted, vulnerable groups?
You know, you are saying women are exploited, you know, women's facilities exploited, you would have.
So they want to encourage people to have more children, and this is surely a disincentive for people to go on reproducing.
So I have many, many comments and questions, but I just I wanted to thank you very much.
I'm sorry that I can't see all the participants. Thank you for coming.
And I very much hope that at some point we can open and be in-person and meet everybody, which is a completely different dynamics.
But thank you so much as that. I really, really learnt and enjoyed, learnt from and enjoy your paper and what I see you next.
I will ask you many more questions on that. Thank you so much.
And thank you, Soraya, very much and thanks as they see our wonderful work.
And it was really. A pleasure. Thank you.