Educational Alternatives, Volume 12, 2014

Abstract: Combining higher education and motherhood is a complicated and challenging task. Within patriar-chal societies this challenge turns to be acute. Women living in such societies are deprived from the right of family planning. Motherhood is experienced as a feminine lot women have to comply with. Moreover, it constitutes a guarantee to moving out to the public sphere. This study focuses on the con-ception of combining higher education and motherhood as it emanated from the experience of reli-gious Jewish students-mothers and Bedouin students-mothers. It probes also the cultural -related simi-larities and divergences. It transpires that students-mothers from both cultures exert great efforts in their way out of the private sphere and consider higher- education as the ultimate pathway to self-actualization over motherhood. Though the Jewish religious students-mothers are much more influ-enced by the non-religious society similarities are discerned in the experience of the two groups.