| Summary/Abstract |
This article reviews the female labour force participation rates (LFPR) of Jewish and Arab women in Israel from 1955 to 2017. One finding of the review is that the female Jewish LFPR are very high, while the female Arab LFPR are very low. We argue that the most likely explanation for this difference is cultural forces in the respective communities which either encourage or discourage women from working. We find support for this idea from LFPR data within subsectors of the two groups, Bedouin women living in the south of Israel, and Jewish women born in the land of Israel.
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