“Successful” Identity Transformation: The Representation of Post-Soviet Women in the Israeli Women’s Magazine La’isha

This article draws on a special issue of La’isha, Israel’s most popular commercial women’s magazine, to study media representations of post-Soviet women. The special issue was dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the 1990s immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Counter to past studies, which suggest post-Soviet women in Israel are represented as morally and socially fragmented, we ask whether the framing of post-Soviet women has changed. Based on analysis of the special issue’s contents and visual images, as well as interviews with parties involved in the production of the issue, our findings reveal four discourses that construct the identity of post-Soviet women: nationality, Russianness, becoming an Israeli, and being a successful immigrant woman. Our main argument is that La’isha presents the post-Soviet woman of the 1.5 generation as the successful image of Western neoliberal feminism while maintaining the traditional discourse of Israeli gender order and ethno-national ethos.









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