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This study examines the mechanisms that create a paradox of marginality among middle-class Arab-Bedouin professional women in Israel by applying an intersectional analysis of their everyday professional life. It shows that the paradox of their marginality -despite their possessing high educational capital in their society, comparable to that of highly educated professional Jewish (men and women) and Arab-Bedouin male colleagues -is reproduced through the differential validation of embodied cultural capital based on women's cultural roles solely as a symbol of their professional inferiority. The study indicates that when their professional capital intersects with other power axes within the public sphere -for example, ethnicity/racism, gender, religious norms and tribalism -it is not accorded recognition or legitimacy by male Arab-Bedouin professionals or by Jewish professionals, colleagues and clients, thus giving rise to representational intersectionality.

This paper examines the phenomenon of the return of Bedouin and Druze women from studies in Israeli universities to their homes and culture, focusing on the perspective of the psychological changes they experienced in their identity. Entering the university, located in the Jewish-Israeli space (in central cities in Israel), constitutes entry into a new and different cultural world that exposes these women to values and norms different from those of their culture of origin. The identity formed as a result of their encounter with and exposure to a world that was unfamiliar to them and the return thereafter to their villages entail changes in gender identity. Not only are they 'different' from the way they were before they left; they often feel like 'internal immigrants' within their own culture. A deeper understanding of these effects would enhance comprehension of the emotional processes and identity changes undergone by women from non-Western cultures who obtain higher education.

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