The “Barefoot War”: How World War I and British Law Disrupted Gender Structures in Mandate Palestine

Although the Great War has been alternately eulogized, glorified, and memorialized for over a century in much of western Europe, the Greater Syria region—present-day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel/Palestine—experienced a level of unparalleled hardship during the war which left a trail of deep psychological and physical trauma. By 1918, the poorest members of the community had either died of starvation or exiled during one of the Ottoman deportations. Forced conscription stripped the region of its manpower, leaving women to fend for themselves in a hostile environment. As a result, gender power structures in Palestine started to shift, with women exercising more autonomy in both the public and private realms. Many saw the arrival of the British in 1917 as a harbinger of more progress for women. Instead, the mandate power halted the social progress of women in Palestine by upholding laws that retrenched traditional gender power structures, and refusing to enact legislation that would further dismantle them. Faced with growing influence in Britain by women demanding political and social advancement, British officials in Palestine used their positions of power to ensure that at least women in the empire would remain in perpetual subordination. In such an environment of conflicting values, concepts of justice, honor, and power were destabilized, reformed, and retrenched in ways that set the groundwork for the many potholes of strife that continue to plague the region a century later.