During the 1980s, in many kibbutzim in Israel, the members decided to change the sleeping arrangements of the children – to have them sleep in their families’ homes instead of the common sleeping at the children’s home. This decision was the result of a long struggle of the kibbutz women, which changed both the social and spatial structure of the kibbutz. The proposed presentation will deal with the role that the spatial structure of the kibbutz had in creating gender inequality, which eventually led the women to conduct this struggle.
The spatial structure of the kibbutz was designed to match the values of an ostensibly gender-equal society. The institutions comprising the traditional family were dismantled and redistributed in the kibbutz, and the "household chores" were carried out collectively in institutions such as the kitchen, the laundry, and the children`s homes. Yet, the kibbutz was never actually gender-equal: The traditional division of labor was preserved, creating a hierarchical spatial division. Space organization of the kibbutz eventually became similar to the common perception of the private home: The areas defined as `feminine` were concentrated at the heart of the kibbutz, well supervised and protected, while the `masculine` areas spread along the boundaries, enabling contact with the outside world.
This spatial division not only reflected gender inequality but may have deepened and reproduced it. While the men experienced unrestricted freedom in the entire area, women experienced space as restrictive and limiting. Their different experience illuminates the women`s struggle to have the children sleep in their parents` homes not as a struggle to return to their `natural` place, as some scholars have noted, but as an effort to gain control over resources and power by re-appropriating their attachment to the private home and family.