The farms are owned by about 550 Jewish farmers and about 1,850 minority group farmers. In 2006, the sheep and goat sector was estimated at about NIS 740 million. In light of these figures, the Agriculture Ministry decided to teach women how to profit from their livestock.
That's when a problem, er, arose.
Are Bedouin woman taking on male-dominated sheep farming?
The winds of change are blowing through Israel's Bedouin sector. For hundreds of years, Bedouin men tended their flocks, while women cooked and raised the children.
Now a new initiative is threatening to disrupt this ancient balance. A joint venture between the Agriculture Ministry and the Danish Foreign Ministry will teach women from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan to raise flocks of dairy sheep and develop sheep's milk product businesses. This idea, however is facing stiff opposition from the mayor of the Bedouin town of Rahat, who contends that women are to help their husbands only in educating their children.
Stiff opposition?
Is their something the men not want the women to discover?
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