{"id":34727,"date":"2019-03-08T14:24:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T14:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34727"},"modified":"2019-03-08T14:24:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T14:24:08","slug":"in-gaza-women-walk-thin-line-between-hope-and-despair-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34727","title":{"rendered":"In Gaza, women walk thin line between hope and despair"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nGAZA: Amid the poverty and deprivation of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian women struggle to find a taste of normality that is taken for granted in much of the rest of the world.
Nada Rudwan used to work in digital marketing, but as her work slowed \u2014 unemployment in Gaza stands at nearly 50 percent \u2014 she decided to put her tech skills toward one of her passions: cooking.
\u201cIt was difficult to find a job, so I thought of doing something I like and that will make me money at the same time,\u201d said Rudwan, 27, who posts cooking tutorials to social media platforms under the name \u201cNada Kitchen.\u201d
Rudwan said she earns income from YouTube proceeds and that several companies in Saudi Arabia recently purchased her videos.
\u201cIt is an attempt to beat the physical blockade of Gaza by finding a job that just needs some talent, a camera and Internet connection,\u201d she said.
More than 2 million Palestinians \u2014 mostly descendants of people who were driven out or fled from territory that is now Israel at its founding in 1948 \u2014 are packed into the narrow Gaza Strip, which shares borders with Israel and Egypt.
Israel maintains tight control of Gaza\u2019s land and sea borders, citing security concerns emanating from Hamas, the Islamist group which controls the coastal territory. Egypt also restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its border.
Those restrictions have devastated Gaza\u2019s economy and left many of its women, like Rudwan\u2019s younger sister, struggling to find work after graduating from college.
\u201cIt is hard to find a job that will allow you take care of your needs,\u201d said Lama Rudwan, 22, a media and communications graduate who joined her sister\u2019s cooking project after an unsuccessful job search.
Disapproving community<\/strong>
Some young women in Gaza speak of struggles in their personal lives, as well. They say shopping and even getting married is made more difficult by the restrictions of Israel, which has fought three wars with Hamas over the past decade.
Hana Abu El-Roos, 18, said she plans to get married this summer but can\u2019t find items she needs for her wedding in any of Gaza\u2019s shops. \u201cI haven\u2019t picked my wedding dress yet,\u201d said El-Roos, who is also busy preparing for her final high school exams. \u201cI am confused. My sisters are helping me.\u201d
Other Gaza women say community pressures weigh on them as they seek to bypass Gaza\u2019s economic struggles by working jobs which some see as non-traditional.
Sahar Yaghi took up work as a wedding planner soon after dropping out of university to earn income for her family.
Yaghi\u2019s party-planning requires her to stay up late at night. She said she sometimes hears some of her neighbors, who view her work as inappropriate, making comments about her.
\u201cI hate some comments. But I love my job and hope to have my own business,\u201d Yaghi, 28, said, adding she wants to become the \u201cfirst female party planner\u201d in Gaza.
For those Gaza women who do have work, the constant fear of losing their job heightens their sense of insecurity.
Sara Abu Taqea said she found temporary work in a Gaza hospital after finishing a bachelor\u2019s degree in midwifery, but that many of her colleagues were not so lucky.
\u201cIt is a six-month contract, with no guarantee of further employment,\u201d said Abu Taqea, 23, who works in the maternity ward at Gaza\u2019s Al-Ahli hospital.
Abu Taqea said she finds a sense of solace in the Mediterranean Sea, whose waves crash along Gaza\u2019s coast.
\u201cWe are lucky to have the sea. The beach is a place for relief, and for meditation, so we can forget about the wars and poverty,\u201d Abu Taqea said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GAZA: Amid the poverty and deprivation of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian women struggle to find a taste of normality that is taken for granted in much of the rest of the world.Nada Rudwan used to work in digital marketing, but as her work slowed \u2014 unemployment in Gaza stands at nearly 50 percent \u2014 she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}