Photos and voices of Arab female students in higher education

This study examines how 40 Palestinian-Arab women pursuing master’s degrees in education negotiate intersecting structures shaping their lives as minoritized, gendered subjects. Using Photovoice and focus groups, the research analyzes how participants articulate experiences across overlapping roles – Palestinian-Arab, mothers, teachers, students – within sociopolitical conditions marked by patriarchy, inequality, and linguistic domination. Photovoice enabled visual and narrative expressions of tension, agency, and subtle resistance beyond traditional qualitative tools. Guided by an intersectional feminist framework, the study shows how gendered expectations, ethnic marginalization, and linguistic hierarchies generate emotional, academic, and economic pressures. The findings reveal obstacles including time constraints, linguistic exclusion in Hebrew-dominant spaces, and conditional family support rooted in patriarchal bargains. Yet participants mobilized strategies, relational support, time management, and strategic conformity to sustain their studies. The study advances feminist debates on minority women’s educational trajectories and underscores the need for institutions to address structural and sociocultural barriers.