The role of intercultural communication in enabling Palestinian women to participate in the political decision-making process in the Palestinian National Authority in the west bank -Palestine 1994-2019 رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

This study aims to identify the role of intercultural communication in enabling and empowering women to participate in political decision-making, considering that Inter-cultural communication between different cultures can reduce the impact of male dominant culture, and encourage closed and conservative societies to go into the experiences of other cultures in empowering and enabling women to participate in political decision-making. The researcher resorted to the interview as a tool to identify the most important obstacles that women face in reaching political decision-making positions, in addition to the impact of their experience in intercultural communication on these obstacles, which resulted in enabling them to reach leadership positions. The researcher conducted individual interviews with a sample of (23) leading woman in Palestine distributed in high positions in various private and governmental institutions, and (13) politicians and academics from Palestine. The study found several results, the most important of which are: that the feminist experiences in intercultural communication have actually contributed to Palestinian women empowerment and their access to leadership positions in the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian National Authority, as these experiences affected their experience, competence, and outlook on political work, thus increased their self-confidence. On the one hand, enhancing their motivation and readiness to indulge in the political sphere as a result of learning about successful examples from other cultures. vi As for the other benefit that helped enable women to reach decision-making, it is the effect of intercultural communication on male culture. It provided an opportunity for society to accept the presence of women in decision-making positions at the societal level. However, at the official level, it became embarrassing to appear in official delegations without the presence of women, which prompted the Palestinian National Authority institutions to include gender unites in their system. Historically intercultural communication contributed to enabling the feminist movement to amend laws and legislation related to the empowerment and protection of women, through their benefit from international and Arab laws, especially the Tunisian experience, in addition to their transfer of the quota experience after learning about it in the Russian and Norwegian experience. Accordingly, the representation of women increased in Leadership and regulatory frameworks. Based on these results, the study recommended employing intercultural communication experiences to enable women to reach positions of political decision-making and to develop systematic and deliberate plans in this field.